David Taylor: The Bill has 300 clauses because we have been waiting 30 years for a piece of heritage legislation—if we wait another year, it will no doubt have 310 clauses, and so on. Among the Bill's proposals were plans to streamline the complicated and often deeply confusing rules surrounding the protection of the UK's heritage buildings. Such streamlining would speed up regeneration. Will she reassure the House that the first possible opportunity for the Bill will be taken? Perhaps that opportunity will be the autumn Queen's Speech, the last of this Parliament—or, indeed, Labour's first Queen's Speech in the next Parliament in June 2010.

Andy Burnham: Sport England invested £2.25 million directly into community sports clubs in the first half of this financial year. For the period 2009-2013, national governing bodies have been awarded a total of £480 million, much of which will be invested in strengthening sports clubs.

Andy Burnham: I am aware of that important issue. As my hon. Friend says, it affects sports clubs in my constituency. I pay tribute to Brian Moore, the former England rugby union player, who has done very good work in drawing our attention to the issue. There are two points of action. First, the sports Minister is seeking a meeting with Ofwat to see what can be done nationally to ensure that sports clubs' needs are taken into account. My hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen needs to be aware that United Utilities is one of two companies nationwide that adopted a policy of calculating rates based on the total area of land, and clubs may need help in explaining their bills to the company, and in challenging those bills. We are working with the Central Council of Physical Recreation and Sport England to give practical advice to sports clubs to help them to challenge their bills if they need to.

Andy Burnham: I agree with my hon. Friend, and I was pleased to visit his constituency recently to see Vauxhall Motors boxing club. Indeed, there is a good tradition in his constituency of local employers providing high-quality sporting opportunities. We were in the ring together, and I need to sharpen up my act to get my own back on my hon. Friend next time. He is right to say that we need to support sports clubs in every way possible. As I have said, the investment coming through from Sport England will be channelled through governing bodies, and we hope that it will get down to clubs. We need to work to encourage more to take up the CASC scheme—community amateur sports clubs—which we calculate has put £48 million into sports clubs. We need to work to help clubs to understand their water bills, and my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Janet Anderson) was right to draw my attention to that issue.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller) is right on every level: sports clubs are the building blocks of our sports infrastructure in this country. We need to help them in every way that we can.

Andy Burnham: The hon. Gentleman is right to challenge me and the sports Minister on these issues, and I hope that he will carry on doing so, as they are clearly incredibly important. However, the picture is more mixed than he acknowledged, or than the press release that he recently put out suggested. Overall, half a million more adults are playing sport, which is a really good sign of progress.
	More people are taking up sport, but the hon. Gentleman is right that there is a worrying decline in participation among some groups. I see the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) nodding, and indeed there are particular issues to consider about participation in sport in London. I am happy to continue to be challenged by the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) on these matters, but I hope that he will acknowledge that the overall trend is up. That is a good thing, and in this Olympic period I am sure that he will join us in wanting to drive it up further among all groups in society.
	Under the whole sport plans that we have just agreed, we want to place sport governing bodies on the spot to get more girls and women playing sport, to improve disability sport and to create more opportunities for people from black and ethnic minority communities. Those are not optional extras, they are critical targets if a sport wants to benefit from public funding.

Andy Burnham: I was pleased to visit the two cricket clubs, Darcy Lever and Bolton Indians, recently. It was not the first time that I had done so, because I used to play in the Bolton association league and was on the end of beatings handed out at both those grounds many times. I know the strength of cricket in my hon. Friend's local area.
	I have two points. First, cricket is the largest beneficiary under the new whole sport plan process that my hon. Friend the sports Minister put in place with Sport England. More money is being directed to the development of cricket, in recognition of the fact that cricket has big needs and faces big costs for its facilities. Secondly, my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) is right that water charges have a great impact on cricket clubs, given the surface area of most of them. It is important that we pursue the discussions that I mentioned and reach a good solution for cricket, recognising the particular needs of cricket clubs. I assure him that I will work diligently on all those things.

Barbara Follett: I would like to commend the hon. Gentleman on all the work that he has done on this extremely knotty problem and to reassure him that every effort will be made to ensure that the transport facilities, whichever site is decided upon, will be world class. We are talking about an iconic facility—English Heritage's most visited—and I want to ensure, just as he does, that the visitor's centre and its transport minimise the impact on the landscape and the archaeology, but at the same time provide people who go with the best possible experience.

Christine Russell: My right hon. Friend has just mentioned the amazing success of Liverpool as European capital of culture, and he will be aware of the significant contribution that the designation of world heritage site status in 2004 made to the economic regeneration of Liverpool. Will my right hon. Friend or his ministerial colleague give me an assurance that in the ongoing review there will be no change of policy that could in any way undermine the aspiration of my city, Chester, for world heritage site status on the basis of its well preserved and unique medieval rows?

Barbara Follett: As Minister for the East of England, I have a particular affection for Southend, which has just acquired its first university, of which I am very proud. I am working with Visit Britain and various other tourism trade bodies to ensure that we have a very good offer. As the hon. Gentleman will know from recent reports, the number of people intending to take their holidays in Britain has risen by 50 per cent., so we have to take advantage of that, as well as of the demand for international tourism.

Peter Luff: Having won fourth place in the private Member's Bill ballot, the Minister—it is obvious which Minister—will know how disappointed I was that his Department was not prepared to support my proposed Bill to reduce the disproportionate impact of the Licensing Act 2003 on travelling circuses. Given that economic conditions next year are likely to make life very difficult for circuses—at a time when, heaven knows, we will need them more than ever—can the Minister reassure me that his Department remains committed to reform of the Licensing Act and that he will bring forward proposals at the earliest possible date?

Jim Devine: Various reports suggest that Manchester City intends to spend more than £100 million on a player, and that, quite frankly, is obscene. We are in a position whereby a country effectively owns a premier league football club. Is it not about time that we carried out an investigation into the premier league with a view to capping these transfer fees?

Andy Burnham: My hon. Friend will know of my strong views on footballing matters. He is right to say that there is widespread concern about the financing of football and its effect on the game. It was that in mind that last year I wrote to the three football authorities, the Football League, the premier league and the Football Association, asking them to take a detailed look at the financial integrity of the game in a number of specific areas, particularly the competitive balance of football. Young supporters will not be brought into the game if they feel that the club in their home town has no chance of getting into the premier league or winning in the long term.
	These matters are crucial to the health of the game—not just in England but in Scotland, because one affects the other—and I assure my hon. Friend that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Sutcliffe) and I continue to pay the closest attention to them. We look forward to receiving a response from the football authorities.

Tessa Jowell: The hon. Gentleman has fought a very doughty campaign on behalf of Bisley. The reason why it was not designated as the venue for the Olympic shooting was precisely because the International Olympic Committee asked that we reconsider the original proposal to locate shooting there. The KPMG study, the terms of reference for which I have set out, was set up precisely to give us the assurance that if public money is invested in temporary venues, it will be well spent and will have the prospect of leaving a legacy.

George Osborne: I begin by thanking the Chancellor for his statement, but he should have been straighter with the British people about the announcements that he is making today. This is not some long-planned, carefully thought-through second phase of Government policy; it is instead the clearest possible admission that the first bail-out of the banks has failed, and now the Government have no option but to attempt a second bail-out—a bail-out whose size we still do not know, whose details remain a mystery and whose ultimate cost to the people of Britain will be known only when this Government have long gone.
	Of course we cannot allow the banking system to fail—but for two months now, the Opposition have warned the Government that bank recapitalisation was not working, that the cost of the preference shares was too high, that the liquidity operations had to be extended, that the promised lending to businesses was not taking place, and that Government guarantees to get lending flowing to the real economy were needed.
	For almost a year we have argued for countercyclical rules that control bank lending in a boom and encourage it in a bust. Each one of those arguments was dismissed by the Government, and each one is today accepted by them. The Prime Minister has finally been forced to confront the truth: he has not saved the world, he certainly has not saved the economy, and he has not even saved the British banks yet. Let us remember what he promised last autumn. He said at the Dispatch Box that
	"the aim of the recapitalisation...is to ensure the flow of money to small businesses and families in our economy."—[ Official Report, 20 October 2008; Vol. 481, c. 30.]
	Yet he did nothing to make that happen, and the result has been dozens of companies going bust through lack of credit, and thousands of jobs being lost, while the Prime Minister and the Chancellor wasted their time on a temporary VAT cut that the country could not afford.
	The Prime Minister also said at the time of the first bail-out in October:
	"We believe that these shares"—
	bought by the taxpayer—
	"will grow in value over the next period of time".
	Well, perhaps the Chancellor could confirm today that on current market valuations the taxpayer has lost almost £17 billion on those shares. We now discover that the Government really did not have a clue about what they were buying, and they did not bother to find out. They did not appear to know that the Royal Bank of Scotland was preparing to post the largest loss in British corporate history. Indeed, on today's share price, the entire bank is now worth less than the £5 billion of preference shares that the Chancellor is swapping.
	The Prime Minister says in interviews that he is angry with the banks. What about the anger of the taxpayers who trusted him with their money? So when the banks come to the Government and say, "Please can we have some more?" we expect the Prime Minister and the Chancellor to answer the following questions before they say yes. First, will the Government conduct their own full, independent audit, not just of the agreements signed, which the Chancellor mentioned in his statement, but of the balance sheets of the banks, so that we know exactly what we, the taxpayers, are now underwriting?
	The Prime Minister called this weekend for the banks to come clean about their losses. Instead of pleading with them, why does he not insist? That is what the Swedish Government did when they pursued the bad bank model in the early 1990s. That is the minimum required if we are to price correctly the insurance that the Government are offering and protect the taxpayer from catastrophic loss. It is the minimum if we are to reassure the public that there is some control over their losses, and that they are not writing a blank cheque.
	That brings me to the second question that the Chancellor must answer. How much is the taxpayer in for? What is the potential loss this time? He could not tell us this morning on the radio, even as the Treasury appeared to be briefing people that the amount was £200 billion. What is the correct figure? What is his estimate? Surely that is the very least that Parliament and the public have a right to know. We need to be absolutely sure that the threat of insolvent banks does not turn into the threat of an insolvent country. We need to be clear that our country's reputation in global markets, and its credit rating, is not put at risk.
	Finally, will the Chancellor be straight with people about the announcement today of an asset purchase facility? He mentioned it in his statement, but he did not spell out that it could have implications for the whole country for years to come. That asset purchase facility gives the Bank of England the power to use asset purchases for monetary policy purposes. That amounts to a programme of "quantitative easing"—the modern equivalent of printing money. While no one rules it out, it is the last resort for Governments who have run out of other options. Two weeks ago the Chancellor said in Liverpool that it was "an entirely hypothetical debate"; that was the phrase that he used. Two weeks later, it has become a real option for which the Government are clearly preparing. What has changed in the space of a fortnight?
	The first bail-out has failed. The VAT cut has failed. None of the endless summits and initiatives has worked. Unemployment continues to rise. New figures out this morning show that Britain is set to have the deepest recession of any major economy in the world. The Government have achieved nothing. As the Prime Minister and the Chancellor ask the British people to put more of their money on the line, surely the time has come for the Prime Minister and Chancellor to stop blaming everyone else and start accepting their responsibility for the boom that turned to bust. When will they accept that, ultimately, the buck stops with them?

Alistair Darling: Let me deal with the various points that the hon. Gentleman made. First, let me deal with his point about the bank rescue scheme that we put in place last October. His criticism would have much more strength if, in fact, he had not at the time supported what we were doing. There was cross-party consensus that what we did to recapitalise British banks was the right thing to do, because we faced a situation in which the system, not just here but in different parts of the world, faced collapse. That is why we took action, and why it was followed in just about every other developed country, and the hon. Gentleman supported it at the time—although he subsequently found it convenient to move away from that and take up a different position, as the truce the Opposition promised, with cross-party co-operation, appeared to break down.
	Secondly, in relation to the support we have announced today, we have done so, because it is quite obvious not just in this country—and it is happening here—but in other countries across the world that economic conditions have deteriorated over the past few months. That is blindingly obvious to everyone, and it is affecting every country in the world. We are seeing it in America and in the euro area. In Germany we have recently seen the effect in industrial production and growing job losses. Growth in China has dropped quite dramatically in the past few months, which in turn has had an impact on confidence in banks and on their reluctance to lend. That is why I have introduced a range of measures to try to unblock some of the problems that we face, as well as providing greater security.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about costs, and in October and again today, I have set out the costs that we anticipate. He should remember that many of the up-front costs are offset to a large extent by the fact that the Bank of England or the Government will take securities, or fees will be charged to protect the taxpayer's interest. However, the cost of doing nothing would be far, far greater and far, far more damaging for the country as a whole. He rightly said that if the Government are to insure, acting as backstop, some assets, there must be a thorough audit so that we understand exactly the risks to which we are exposed. The reason why I announced today that we would offer that scheme is that it is now necessary for us to enter into discussions with individual banks, to see what we are prepared to insure. At that point, I will be able to come back to the House and explain exactly what the Government are taking on.
	However, I must tell the hon. Gentleman again that we are not the only country doing this. Unless we are prepared to use the power of government to get lending going again, the problems will simply be compounded as more and more firms get into difficulties—they cannot get access to credit and so get into difficulty—which feeds back into the effect on the banks.
	The hon. Gentleman is right—I agree with him—and I said in my statement that we needed to have a thorough audit, openness and substantially more transparency than we have seen in the banking system over the past few years. The last thing about which he asked was the question of monetary policy and quantitative easing, which I mentioned quite deliberately in my statement, because I wanted to tell the House exactly what we are doing. Under the scheme that we are proposing, there would be no increase in the amount of money going into the economy, because for any additional money that the Bank of England puts in through normal market operations, an equivalent sum will be taken out, so that it will not affect the quantity of money in the economy.
	I did say, however, that by having this mechanism it is possible that if, at some point in the future, we wanted to use it for monetary purposes, it could be so used, but that is not what we are doing at the moment. I shall repeat to the House what I said this morning: if that policy changes, I shall tell the House. At the moment, although our interest rates are low at 1.5 per cent., we are not in the same position as they are in America, where interest rates are virtually zero. I have been very up-front: I have said to the House that this is exactly what the position is just now, but if the policy changes, I will tell the House. I would, however, say in conclusion that I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman and the Conservatives could not maintain cross-party support. I really do think that at this time, when we face such serious economic conditions across the world, that all of us should work together to help get credit going again, to help the wider economy, and to help the people of this country and of countries around the world.

Vincent Cable: It is clear from the statement today that the crisis in the banking system is even more serious than it appeared three months ago, that the economy is in an even more vicious downward spiral, and that the bank rescue did not work. The Government increasingly resemble somebody who is trying to give the kiss of life to a corpse.
	But before we discuss the latest resuscitation techniques, may I go back to the bank rescue that we had? It was a £37 billion recapitalisation: what happened to the £37 billion? Where did it go? The Government tell us that they are putting in place new lending agreements, but when the £37 billion was put in we were told that there was conditionality and that there were lending agreements. What happened to them, and where did the money go? Why was no inventory of bad debts taken at that time?
	Is not the truth of the matter that instead of lending the money, as the Government and the Treasury wanted, the banks held it in reserve, as required by the Financial Services Authority? The significance of the FSA's statement today is that it got it wrong and is now having to change its instruction, which undermined what the Treasury, the Government and the taxpayer were trying to achieve.
	On the new £100 billion guarantee scheme, how is it possible to insure enormous amounts of bad debt if the insurer does not know the risk, and if the risk cannot be evaluated until we have a valuation of the bad debts, which nobody yet has? Are the Government not operating the scheme in a falling asset market, with potentially enormous losses coming through on commercial property, for example? This morning, one of the brokers in the City estimated that in a falling asset market, the £100 billion insurance scheme could produce losses for the taxpayer of £30 billion to £40 billion. We are talking about an amount the size of the defence budget, which could go down the pan if this is wrongly timed and wrongly operated.
	May I get to what I think we all agree is the central issue, which is how we get new lending going to sound commercial and household borrowers? I welcome the change of direction at Northern Rock; it had to happen. But the key is what the Government are doing with NatWest-Royal Bank of Scotland. The Government have increased their share from 58 per cent. to 70 per cent. Is that not nationalisation in all but name? Why do we not just say so, and why do the Government not spell out the implications of acquiring a bank whose balance sheet is bigger than the British economy? Why do they not explain to us, for example, why this bank managed to lose £2.5 billion through lending money to a Russian oligarch? This is not just about the past. I have been corresponding with the chairman about the bank's loans to another oligarch, Mr. Deripaska. The chairman tells me that it is a commercial matter—but it is not a commercial matter but a public policy issue. Another public policy issue is what happens to the hundreds of billions—not tens of billions—of toxic paper in the investment bank, because the taxpayer now has responsibility for that.
	I want to conclude on this point. The Government now effectively control one of the largest banks in the world. They will almost certainly have to put more money in, and they may well acquire other banks. Why do they not now focus on the issue of how to get those banks—those enormous institutions—channelling funds into the British economy, and concentrate on that single-mindedly as their major objective?

Alistair Darling: I agree with the hon. Gentleman to this extent: the key for us, as for other Governments, is to get lending going into the wider economy. But I disagree with him in that I think that that has to be done not just through one particular bank, but through the banking system in general. The proposals that I have made aim to do that.
	The hon. Gentleman asked a number of questions. He asked about the £37 billion. That was used to buy shares in the Lloyds group of banks—Lloyds-HBOS—and also in RBS. We still have those shares, and in time, when conditions improve as we get through this, our intention is to return that back on a commercial basis.
	The FSA has made changes to the rules, but it can do only so much; it is also necessary to reform the Basel agreement, which governs the international capital ratios to which the hon. Gentleman referred. He was not the only one calling for that change; many, many people have been doing that.
	The hon. Gentleman also asked about the agreements with RBS. The majority shareholding in RBS was acquired by the Government in December, and overall lending by RBS did increase as part of that wider agreement. Indeed, today, in return for converting our preference shares into ordinary shares, RBS has agreed to extend its lending by £6 billion. In relation to the other bank in which we have a shareholding—the Lloyds group—it is only today that that new organisation has come into force because of the procedures that had to be followed through. I agree with the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) that it is important that we, and indeed banks, are clear as to what exactly is on their balance sheets. Clearly, in the case of RBS, the decision to acquire ABN a couple of years ago, with all the problems that have followed from that, caused that bank some very substantial problems.
	If we are going to enter into an insurance scheme, or any scheme anything like that, we need to be clear exactly what the exposure is. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) asked why we do not know today—but he answered that question to some extent himself. That process is difficult when conditions are deteriorating, and it takes time. However, I thought it right to tell the House what the Government's intentions are in that respect. I agree with him that the key thing is to ensure that we take action to get borrowing going into the economy, but that has to be done through the whole banking system, not just part of it.

Alistair Darling: In relation to RBS, the Government acquired their shareholding about five weeks ago. A new management team was put in, and a new chief executive, and one of their jobs was to go through the books and find out what their liabilities were. Until that time we did not have the power to go in and conduct that examination, because it was a privately owned bank; it was not owned by the state. That has been possible only since we got that shareholding and put in the different team. Of course, the reporting requirements of the markets mean that these things are reported to the stock market rather than to the House of Commons. I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman that very many people in this country are justifiably angry about what has happened. We need to sort the matter out, and we need to ensure that we can sort out the particular problems in the banks that we own, but above all we need to ensure that we can get credit flowing again.

Ian McCartney: I thank my right hon. Friend and support his statement today, particularly his clear stand about an obligation on banks to start lending to our citizens and to our companies in the wider economy. In his negotiations with banks, what obligations will he place on them to deal more fairly with borrowers from low-income families? For the past few years, banks have failed abysmally to offer those people proper facilities and resources to bank in an adequate way, leading them sometimes to be the victim of loan sharks. Can he give some indication of what banks will now be expected to do to assist this huge group of people in Britain who are suffering very badly in the current crisis?

Nicholas Winterton: The Chancellor has many times told the House that the crisis that arose last October was the reason that he invested taxpayers' money, to the tune of £37 billion, in the banks. Have we learnt the lesson? I have studied the views of many people, including expert economists and those from the City and in finance. They warned that what was happening in this country—excessive, irresponsible lending and borrowing—could not go on. Why did the Government not act sooner? Coming from a smaller business background, I certainly would have.

David Miliband: With permission, Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a further statement to the House on Gaza.
	From the outset of the conflict, the UK has called and worked for an immediate ceasefire. I know from questions on my statement last week that the whole House will have felt enormous relief on Saturday night when Israel halted its military operations in Gaza, and on Sunday when Hamas stopped its rocket fire. Our relief at the ceasefire is matched by our distress that it has taken so long to be achieved. The respite has come too late for too many.
	A ceasefire, as Security Council resolution 1860 made clear, was always going to be the essential first step. We urge Israel to complete the withdrawal of its troops from Gaza with all due speed. Hamas must put a definitive end to rocket fire at Israel. That is why the Prime Minister travelled to Sharm-el-Sheikh and Israel yesterday to join other world leaders in starting to embed that ceasefire and ensure it becomes the durable and fully respected ceasefire that we and the Security Council have called for.
	In the last 22 days of the Israeli offensive, more than 1,200 Palestinians have been killed, many more injured, countless thousands displaced and critical infrastructure destroyed. We are yet to know the full extent of the destruction, but horrific accounts and images already fill our news bulletins and we can be sure that life for Gazans, which was already grim, has become desperate. Systems for power, sewage and food distribution are broken or under strain. Meanwhile rockets have reached further than ever from Gaza into Israel. Israel has lost nine soldiers and four civilians.
	The Gaza crisis has reverberated around the world. There have been large demonstrations in the middle east, but also in the west. The conflict has also been used to whip up hatred, including in this country, and I am sure the whole House will want to send a very clear and cross-party message that we all denounce the anti-Semitic attacks that have taken place and vow to work for their elimination.
	We are faced with two immediate challenges: stopping the flow of arms and starting the flow of aid into Gaza. In respect of trafficking in arms, as the Prime Minister announced yesterday, we are ready to play our part. The immediate security responsibility lies with Egypt, but the origin of these arms stretches way beyond the Egypt-Gaza border. This is where international help, aimed at interdiction, using intelligence and a range of military assets, is important.
	It is not just arms that are smuggled, however. The closure of the crossings has also created a thriving illegal trade in necessities, which has filled Hamas's coffers without providing Gazans the basics that they require. Hand in hand with closing illegal traffic must go a vast increase in legal traffic. The immediate priority is to meet the desperate humanitarian needs. That means not simply food and medicine but, for example, sanitation equipment. Then there are all the supplies that are required to repair Gaza's ruined infrastructure and return power and water. The Government have pledged a further £20 million, on top of the £6.8 million that we pledged earlier in the conflict. British charities have raised millions more.
	The Prime Minister made it clear in Egypt and in Israel that reopening the crossings would be vital. The 2005 movement and access agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority should provide the framework. We are ready to help, including by reinstating and, if necessary, extending the EU border assistance mission at the Rafah crossing.
	Smuggling and the crossings will be at the heart of the discussions this Wednesday evening, when all 27 EU Foreign Ministers meet Foreign Minister Livni, and on Sunday evening, when we meet our Palestinian, Egyptian, Jordanian and Turkish counterparts. However, the critical actors alongside Israel in securing progress, never mind peace, are the Palestinians themselves. Full humanitarian reconstruction will be impossible unless accompanied by political reconstruction. Unity in Palestinian politics is vital to so many things—to rebuilding Gaza, to holding elections, to delivering peace. It is for President Abbas to lead that process. The Arab League and Egyptian commitments of last November point the way forward.
	At a time of enormous loss for Palestinians, one thing should not be forgotten. Palestinians on the west bank did not respond to Hamas's calls for a third intifada. In fact, the Government of Prime Minister Fayyad on the west bank showed clearly in their management—political, economic and security management—that given half a chance, Palestinian government can be hugely effective and provide a real partner for peace.
	At the UN and in the House last week, I said that the Gaza crisis was a symptom of political failure. To avoid its repetition we need a political process—a strong one. The Arab League showed in its letter to President-elect Obama in December that it was serious about its ground-breaking offer of peace embodied in the Arab peace initiative: the creation of a Palestinian state in return for Arab normalisation of relations with Israel, a genuine 23-state solution.
	The challenge is to ensure that this Gaza crisis does not simply provide another grim milestone in an endless conflict. As we help Gazans to rebuild their lives, we must find a way to ensure that this is the last time they will have to do so. That means showing serious progress towards a Palestinian state alongside improved Israeli security. It means a peace process in which closed-door negotiations are buttressed by Israel and the Arab world taking steps to support rather than undermine the peace process.
	However, anyone who doubts that peace in the middle east requires the full, intense engagement of the international community needs only to look at the streets of Gaza today. International engagement that is full and intense includes the immediate engagement of the new American President and Administration. President-elect Obama and his Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton have made clear that they understand the urgency and are committed to acting. This will certainly be the first topic raised when I speak to the new Secretary of State this week.
	Palestinians and Israelis will be asking themselves today whether they are fated to permanent conflict. I know that I will have the support of the whole House in doing everything possible to avert that future.

David Miliband: I will go through the three sets of specific questions that the right hon. Gentleman raised. Before raising them, however, he referred to the investigation of serious allegations of war crimes and other misdemeanours, and he will know that I said very clearly in my statement last week that those allegations must be closely and speedily investigated. Obviously, the three key parties to that investigation are the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Government of Israel, and we are in touch with all of them. I should also point out that however heinous is the crime of using people as "human shields"—a terrible phrase—that does not change the responsibilities of parties to the conflict to spare the lives of civilians; it is important not to forget that.
	In respect of the ceasefire, we will hear more from the Israeli Foreign Minister on Wednesday. I spoke to her on Friday, and we will have to wait and see where the Israelis' thinking has got to on the smuggling issue and the suggestion of further memorandums of understanding. Obviously, we want to make sure that we make a practical difference in respect of the smuggling, which is in part a local issue across the Egypt-Gaza border, but which is also a wider one given the regional and even global flows of arms that take place.
	There are three limits on how much detail I can provide. First, by definition, since the people trying to do the smuggling are acting illicitly, there are natural limits on how much we will ever be able to reveal. Secondly, discussions are under way about the precise combination of different countries and different assets that will be deployed. Thirdly, the legal mandate also needs to be worked through. What was significant about the meeting in Sharm-el-Sheikh yesterday, and the one in Israel, was the commitment of the international community to make a difference on that issue. That is definitely a step change.
	On the humanitarian situation, it is very important to distinguish between immediate relief—the matter of life and death, in some cases, in respect of medical supplies now—and the reconstruction that will have to take place in due course. The right hon. Gentleman asked whether I was confident that there was enough; one can never be confident that there is enough, not least in circumstances such as these. Although I understand that the number of lorries going through the crossings has increased over the past day or two—I hoped to have the exact figure when I came to the House, but it had not arrived by the time I left for here—it would be foolish to say that I was confident that the organisation and the amount will meet the need. That is because the need is huge and, as was pointed out last week, given that journalists have not been to the area, the extent of the need is only now being sketched out. A joint EU-UN mission—a so-called "needs assessment mission"—will go in precisely to get to the bottom of the extent of the need. I think that to pronounce confidence now would be complacent.
	On the role of the European border assistance mission, the 2005 agreement provides the basis for it and the personnel are in place and waiting, but, of course, very difficult political issues are associated with it. It was an agreement between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli Government, and both insist that they should be the partners of the EU force at any crossings. There are seven crossings in total—one of them into Egypt—and we need to ensure that the management arrangements are appropriate for all of them.
	Finally, on the wider comprehensive peace that is sought, one of the casualties of this crisis has, of course, been the Israel-Syria talks, which were broken off at its beginning. The comprehensive peace to which we are committed, as I believe are the right hon. Gentleman and his party, does indeed require compromises, but it also requires a process. That process will have to be akin more to the Madrid process of the early 1990s than to the Annapolis process of the past year—the key difference being the breadth of the Madrid process compared with the relatively narrow focus of the Annapolis process, however worthy and important it has been.

Edward Davey: I thank the Foreign Secretary for his statement and totally agree with him that the two key priorities for the next few days must be consolidating the ceasefire and ensuring that the urgent humanitarian aid gets through to all those who need it. May I also immediately agree with him and the Conservative spokesman that we must all fight anti-Semitism wherever it raises its ugly head?
	On the ceasefire, will the Foreign Secretary answer in more detail the questions put to him by the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) about the Prime Minister's proposals for a Royal Navy deployment to help to stop some of the smuggling? What would be the exact terms of such a British naval deployment, not least any terms of engagement? Will he confirm whether he and his fellow Foreign Ministers made it clear to both sides that they would both be expected to implement rapidly the well-known conditions needed for a sustainable ceasefire, whether those conditions were the end of rocket attacks or the opening of the crossings into Gaza?
	On humanitarian assistance, will the Foreign Secretary confirm that there is no prohibition on the UN or NGOs distributing British-funded aid via the Hamas authorities when that is simply the most effective and quickest way of getting aid to stricken people?
	On the question of longer term support for reconstruction, will the Foreign Secretary ensure that the EU and the British Government remain pragmatic and flexible in how we get the best value for money and the quickest results for Gazans? Will he accept that whether we like it or not, urgent reconstruction will require a level of engagement with Hamas that the international community has not previously managed? There is talk of a $2 billion Arab programme for reconstruction in Gaza, but will he ensure that the EU formally requests the Israeli Government to make significant contributions, too?
	As the world reflects on the past few weeks, will the Foreign Secretary give more details on the timing of the investigations into any breaches of international law by either side that the UN or others might want to pursue? May I also return to the reassurances that he gave me last Monday, when he said that no British-made weapons or weapons components were used by the Israeli defence forces in their operations against Gaza? In general, will he commit to provide to the House as soon as possible a full report of the evidence used by the Government to monitor compliance with the Government's policies in relation to arms export licences granted for arms sales to Israel? In particular, will he confirm for the record that the Israeli-owned British company UAV Engines did not supply any parts for any of the Israeli drones used?
	Perhaps the most ominous words today come from King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who said that the Arab peace initiative will not be on the table for ever. Does the Foreign Secretary agree that that is the clearest diplomatic signal yet of the grave damage that the conflict has brought on Israel's own long-term interests for peace? Does he agree that such views mean that everyone must now redouble their efforts for a lasting peace in the middle east?

Andrew Pelling: In the past, attempts have been made to engage the community through the use of neighbourhood panels, but sometimes the police reject the involvement of local residents associations. I have one such very strong association in my area, Spring Park residents association, which has been denied representation on that panel. Would the new legislation make it easier for strong residents associations to be represented on those important neighbourhood panels, which, in turn, support the police?

Jacqui Smith: I know that the Mayor has called for that, not least in his briefing for this debate, although I wonder whether the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling)—it would be interesting to hear from him on that today—agrees with the Mayor that responsibility for the appointment of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who has a national responsibility for counter-terrorism, should be taken out of the hands of the Home Secretary and put into those of the Mayor of London.
	Our changes mean that we need the police to be more professional and effective than ever, especially at the top and in their leadership. I am pleased that the Bill will reinforce their ability to develop talent from every background by strengthening the independence and status of the Senior Appointments Panel for chief officers. It is clear that accountability is crucial in building the public's trust and confidence. That is why we propose to place a new duty on police authorities to have regard to the public's views in the exercise of all their functions. We are also giving a strengthened inspectorate the power to assess how well the public's views are being reflected during the new inspections of police authorities.
	I want to go further, and to introduce the direct election of some members of police authorities. However, events late last year convinced me that there are still legitimate questions about how to achieve that without the risk of politicising the police. It is vital to protect the police's operational independence, as I have made abundantly clear to the House on many occasions. We remain convinced of the merits of direct election as part of a responsive and fully accountable police service, but in the light of last year's events, and having listened closely to all the views on the issue, I believe that it is right to do more work in this area before pressing ahead. In the meantime, with the proposed changes to the role of the inspectorate and the measures that we have taken since the policing Green Paper, I believe that we have a robust system in place that we can build on for the future.
	Alcohol-related violent crime is down by one third since 1997, and perceptions of the extent of antisocial behaviour have fallen significantly over the past five years, but we know that antisocial behaviour and other lower level crime can have a corrosive effect on our communities, so we will take further action in the Bill to prevent crime and disorder from taking root.

Humfrey Malins: The Home Secretary is being generous. Under clause 26 the
	"penalty for offence of consuming alcohol in a designated public place"
	will increase from £500 to £2,500. How relevant is that, given that since the offence has been in force no one, but no one has been fined more than £250, and the majority of fines have been well under £100? Because of the guidelines imposed by the Government, the maximum fine or anything like it cannot be imposed on any occasion, so why bother? Is it just a silly headline?

David Kidney: I am at one with my right hon. Friend in wanting to stamp out excessive and irresponsible drinking, which is fuelling too much crime in our society. However, may I ask her to be cautious in seeking a power to impose a new code of practice on pubs and to ensure that she does not put another nail in the coffin of well run and orderly public houses, which are already so financially fragile at the present time?

John Grogan: Would it be possible to give a commitment to publish the mandatory code for alcohol retailers before the Committee stage, so that it can be sensibly discussed? I am encouraged by some of the words that my right hon. Friend has used, but does she recognise that if the code is too onerous—the regulatory impact assessment suggested that for a well run community pub that causes no problems to anyone the code could cost £1,100 a year—there is a danger that, as has been mentioned, the rate of pub closures could rapidly increase?

Jacqui Smith: Now I regret giving way to the hon. Gentleman, because I do not know the answer to that question. However, I am sure that the Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing will provide it in his summing up.
	The public want to see a fair system of justice. The seizure of criminal assets is one of our most powerful tools in fighting crime, and it delivers many other benefits as well. It deprives criminals of capital, reduces the incentives for criminal activity, and eases the harm caused by crime. Just as importantly, it promotes confidence in the criminal justice system and lets the public see that the criminals are not getting away with their crimes. To date, more than £500 million worth of assets have been recovered since the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 came into force in 2003, including £136 million in 2007-08 alone. That is a good achievement, but, as I said when we launched our anti-drugs strategy last year, we want to do more. That is why the Bill includes new powers to seize goods on arrest, which will be particularly useful in ensuring that criminals cannot get rid of their assets before the courts can get to them. At the same time, it will send a powerful message to criminals that they will not be able to get away with their crimes and flaunt their illegally gained wealth.
	The mark of any civilised society is how it protects the most vulnerable, so I am pleased that the Government passed a major milestone in December when we ratified the Council of Europe convention against human trafficking. This strengthened the UK's ability to catch the criminals who exploit victims of trafficking, and underlined the Government's long-term commitment to tackle this horrific crime. In too many cases, the trafficking is directly linked to the demand for prostitution in this country. It has been clear to me for some time that tackling the demand side of the equation is one of the best ways we have of fighting back against the misery of prostitution and human exploitation.

Jacqui Smith: I am opposed to exploitation, whether it stems from trafficking or elsewhere. I am opposed to the fact that there are women in this country who do not make a free choice to engage in prostitution and are being controlled, exploited and in some cases effectively enslaved. We are proposing the new measures in order to take action against that. I know that the hon. Gentleman has an important and good record on campaigning against trafficking. I think that the provisions will help us to identify and limit it, because without the demand for the prostitution, often fed by trafficking, we have more chance of tackling the actual trafficking itself, to which I know the hon. Gentleman is seriously committed.

Lynne Jones: I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way. Does she agree that what she proposes is further to criminalise sex workers unless they participate in compulsory rehabilitation on pain of imprisonment. What evidence is there that such compulsory rehabilitation actually works? Should we not concentrate on providing excellent programmes that people who want to leave prostitution can engage in? Furthermore, how does criminalising men help keep sex workers safe? Why does the Home Secretary not listen to the evidence put forward by the Safety First coalition—a wide umbrella of organisations campaigning to keep sex workers safe. It was set up after the terrible murders in Ipswich, so why does she not listen to its evidence on these issues?

Jacqui Smith: On the first point, as my hon. Friend will see if she looks at how the provisions on rehabilitation orders are drafted, it is obvious that they are put forward as an alternative to a fine or other sentence when a woman has been brought before the courts. It is an alternative to criminalising, not further criminalising women in the way my hon. Friend suggests. On the second point, we listened to many different people who represented or purported to represent sex workers and others affected by prostitution during the tackling demand review. There is no consensus about the right way forward, but I am pretty clear that without a demand for prostitution, particularly the sort of prostitution that involves exploited or trafficked women, there would be less of it. That, I think, is what all of us across the House want to see.
	At the same time as taking those provisions forward, I will also give the police greater powers to tackle the kerb crawlers who blight neighbourhoods and create the demand for street prostitution. Whether it is kerb crawlers or lap-dancing clubs, we all need to listen and respond on behalf of the law-abiding majority. We need communities to be fully engaged and feel that their views are being heard, so that they can have real confidence in the criminal justice system. In the case of lap-dancing clubs, I think we need to do more to make sure that happens. The number of lap-dancing clubs in towns and cities across the UK has doubled since 2004 and in many areas the public are fed up with having no say in where these clubs open. That is why I propose to reclassify lap-dancing clubs as sex encounter venues to give local people a far louder voice in determining whether and where those clubs can be set up.
	Let me move on to another issue that affects vulnerable people in our society. We are always examining how to strengthen the robust system that we have in place for managing sex offenders. As such, this Bill includes further measures to curb the ability of child sex offenders to harm children either here in the UK or abroad. The Bill reforms the provisions on foreign travel orders, increasing their duration and automatically removing passports from individuals subject to a blanket foreign travel order. At the same time, we will tighten up the rules around sexual offences protection orders so that, for example, the police can restrict the activities of offenders from other jurisdictions as soon as they arrive back in the UK.
	We live in a great country that enjoys a robust, fair and effective criminal justice system. Britain is not broken, even if, given their proposed cuts, Tory credibility on fighting crime is. We are extremely effective at tackling crime while protecting the innocent and vulnerable, but we cannot be complacent, which is why this Bill is so important. I believe that its provisions will improve the public's ability to determine how they are policed, while also improving the capacity and effectiveness of the law enforcement agencies that protect us all. It brings together the right powers to offer confidence to communities and to protect the most vulnerable, while delivering the tools we need to fight against crime and disorder. This Bill links the international fight against crime to the fight at national, regional and local level. It is a Bill to build stronger, safer and more confident communities; I commend it to the House.

Chris Grayling: I am not sure that I would want to employ the hon. Gentleman as my accountant. Let me point out to him that he is part of an Administration who managed to spend £150 million on management consultants in the Home Office two years ago, and whose Chancellor of the Exchequer stood at the Dispatch Box about three weeks ago and said he did not believe that there were not efficiencies to be made in Government. I will take no lectures from the hon. Gentleman about the need for all of us, in these difficult times, to draw in the horns of the public sector when our constituents—people around the country—are having to do the same.
	The Conservatives have pledged to make crime statistics totally independent. Ministers and special advisers will no longer receive advance warning, and the public will be given the whole truth. Why will the Home Secretary not agree today to give up control and privileged access, and end the politicisation of crime statistics that has done so much to corrode public confidence? That would make a difference. Perhaps the Home Secretary would like to tell us now that she is willing to do it. I see that she cannot be persuaded to change her mind, but does she now at least accept the formal leaked information from the head of the Home Office, Sir David Normington, to Ministers that
	"levels of the most serious violence are higher than they were ten years ago"?
	The stark reality is that violent crime has risen by 80 per cent. under this Government. Gun violence has soared almost fourfold and fatal stabbings are up by a third—figures that mask the untold human suffering inflicted on victims and their families up and down the country. It is against that background that the Bill must be judged, but it contains nothing that will rectify those tragic failings. Even the measures that we can welcome are irrelevant to what is required to make our streets safer and restore public confidence. As I shall make clear later, in the area of increasing police accountability and co-operation with the public, the Government have lost their way entirely.
	Let me begin by responding to the main sections of the Bill. We can certainly welcome the appointment of Sir Ronnie Flanagan as chair of the senior appointments panel, but will the Home Secretary commit herself to listening to his advice? In February last year, Sir Ronnie gave a candid assessment of 10 years of failed policy, which, in his words, had left the police subject to "perverse incentives", "a slave to doctrine", and "straitjacketed by process". The Home Secretary has completely failed to deliver on her promises to reduce the stifling effects of Whitehall micro-management, and the Bill does nothing to reduce the burden of bureaucracy that leaves officers with just 14 per cent. of their time to spend on patrol.
	The principle of an appointments panel is sensible, but it is strange that it gives the Association of Chief Police Officers a statutory position in advising on appointments when the status of ACPO itself remains undefined. Is it an external reference group for Home Office Ministers, or a professional association protecting senior officers' interests? Is it a national policing agency, or is it a pressure group arguing for greater police powers?
	During the initial outcry over the handling of the arrest of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), the chairman of ACPO saw its role as pontificating on the rights of the police to override the rights of parliamentarians to do their job and to determine what constitutes national security, which I found very odd indeed. Unless ACPO's status is sorted out, we shall have some doubts over whether it should have this role on a statutory basis. I hope that Ministers will be able to provide more information about that in Committee, and that we shall have more opportunities to debate it then.

Chris Grayling: I am sorry that the hon. Lady has not been listening to the comments of my hon. Friends on the Conservative Front Bench, but I am glad that there is agreement in all parts of the House on the need for change in an area that affects a number of other areas of government. It affects my former brief, for instance: jobs in such clubs were being advertised through local jobcentres. We need to do all we can to ensure that exploitation does not take place, and to give local communities the right to say when or where something should or should not happen.
	We welcome stronger powers to crack down on binge drinking. A million people were victims of alcohol-related violence last year, with accident and emergency admissions related to alcohol up by a quarter since 2004. No one can deny the evidence from the police, local authorities and hospitals that the Government's reckless policy of allowing 24-hour drinking has inflicted misery on innocent law-abiding citizens across Britain, not least the professionals who work in front-line services.

Chris Grayling: I am delighted that the hon. Lady is keen to find out what our policies are for the future, because we hope to form a Government in the next 18 months. As I have said, we regard the issue as being worthy of concern. My hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne), the shadow Chancellor, has set out measures to toughen the rules for supermarkets, and I will be considering other options with him. The Conservatives are committed to tackling the scourge of excessive consumption of alcohol which affects so many of our city centres, so many of our communities and, as the hon. Lady will know, so many inner-city areas. The blight of alcohol addiction in many of our most deprived communities is a real barrier to helping young people, in particular, make more of their lives, and we must address that.

Anthony Steen: I congratulate my hon. Friend on taking up his new post; we are delighted to see him in it. On the traffickers recovery programme, I do not know whether he knows that at present when traffickers are found, money can be confiscated from them, but it goes to the Treasury and is lost in that black hole. Does he agree that it would be a far better idea, and that this should have been in the Bill, that when traffickers' ill-gotten gains are taken away from them, that money should go to the victims? At present, the National Criminal Justice Board gives money, but it is Treasury money, so victims are not getting it from the traffickers.

Chris Grayling: The hon. Lady makes a very good point.
	There are many things missing from this Bill that we would have welcomed, and, indeed, which we have called for for some time: measures to cut red tape, slash targets and consolidate excess audit; measures to address the sweltering burden of bureaucracy that police officers strain under day in, day out; proposals to revise the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 so that police do not spend hours filling out forms so that they can stake out the house of a known burglar; a strengthening of the powers of stop and search to deal with spikes in gun, knife or drug crime in hot spots; returning charging discretion to the police for summary offences to free up 1 million police hours; reversing the health and safety rules so that the risk to the public is made the top priority; and changing the rules so that police and prosecutors support members of the public who intervene in good faith to uphold the law. However, the most salient omission consists of the proposals for directly elected crime and policing representatives set out in the Green Paper published last July. It is something of a climbdown to go from a Green Paper to a first clause that cannot be more than 10 lines long; that is a dramatic climbdown by this Government.
	The Home Secretary had promised this proposed legislation
	"to strengthen the democratic link with the public".
	She even went so far as to hail "a new deal" of
	"greater freedom for the police, matched by greater power for the public."—[ Official Report, 17 July 2008; Vol. 479, c. 435.]
	That was a nice slogan that got good press, but then it was dropped. Nothing better sums up this Government's obsession with spin over substance—with headlines over delivery—than their failure to keep their promises to cut police paperwork and give back control over policing to local communities.

Christopher Huhne: I am always delighted to follow the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz). He gave some wise words of advice to the Home Secretary, which I hope that she heeds. I shall turn to that aspect of the Bill later in my speech. I also want to congratulate the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) on his inaugural outing and on his appointment to an important role in the House, joining the somewhat select gathering of those who tend to come to the House for Home Office business.
	The Bill is a hotch-potch, as is commonly recognised, but it hides a clear hole. It is a hotch-potch because it contains legal ingredients on matters that are barely related, which have been thrown together with no thought as to freshness, let alone a recipe. We have measures on police reform, force collaboration, prostitution, aviation security, alcohol-fuelled disorder, asset seizures and extradition. This is the 66th criminal justice Bill since 1997, and it should be becoming abundantly clear that quantity does not make up for a lack of quality. I want first in my remarks to deal with the central void in the Bill, namely police reform. I shall then deal with some of the bitty aspects and I shall finally turn to the reforms of the prostitution laws, which would not only be controversial, but in my view—I agree with the right hon. Member for Leicester, East—a serious mistake.
	The largest disappointment of all is the fact that the Bill hides a hole because the fundamental direction of travel on which the Government had embarked in their Green Paper, which the Liberal Democrats welcomed, has been ditched. Localism has gone; it has disappeared; it has vanished like a Cheshire cat. Yet there is no alternative set of proposals and no alternative vision of the world.
	I assume that the Government still intend to abandon the extensive national targets, as the Home Secretary appeared to imply earlier, that they built up following the introduction of the Police Reform Act 2002, but if so, who is to exercise the powers that the Home Secretary has exercised until now? If it is the existing police authorities who will do so, then we are merely back to the position as it was before 2002. The duty that the Bill will introduce is negligible in its difference from the duty in the Police Act 1996. In short, we are now back to the police governance arrangements as they were when the Home Office decided that they did not work.
	Let me remind the House that those arrangements did not work in terms of efficiency because there had been a long-term decline in detection rates for recorded crime, even though detection is the most crucial part of an effective deterrent against crime. That is important. One could introduce sharia law in this country and it would have no effect on crime whatsoever if the chances of getting caught remained extremely low. On a broad definition of crime, including business crime, only one in 100 crimes ends with a conviction in court—99 do not.
	National targets are a blunt instrument with many unexpected and counter-productive effects, but they have introduced some new focus on efficiency, effectiveness and outcomes. What will now take their place? The answer in the Green Paper was right: local accountability. Local accountability involves two crucial elements that are now lacking. The first would be a proper local debate about priorities, which would allow local police forces to use their police authority as a genuine sounding board on popular opinion. It would also allow the abandonment of targets that were inevitably nonsense in some parts of the country, such as targets for cuts in the types of crime that were already negligible in some force areas. The second crucial element would be a local drive to greater efficiency. The fact that police authorities should be accountable to voters would drive police forces to compare their own working methods with best practice and to improve. That matters because the variations in police performance are just as significant as the common factors. If the average detection rate were improved so that it came closer to that of the top 10 per cent. of forces in this country, nearly 400,000 more crimes would be detected each year. That would be a real deterrent, as we know from the Home Office's research against crime.
	Even for serious offences such as violence, detection rates vary widely, from 36 per cent. at their lowest in London to 67 per cent. at their highest, yet those offences should surely be a high priority everywhere.

Christopher Huhne: My hon. Friend makes an important point about his local police force, which is, by the way, an extremely good police force in terms of its detection rates. It is very effective. In view of the model of local accountability that we Liberal Democrats are talking about, it is extremely important that there should be an established, understood formula for funding that takes into account need across the country and that is not subject to the sort of vagaries that we have sadly seen as both the Treasury and the Home Office have chopped and changed on such issues as police community support officers and the 101 number.
	The Government's former answer to the problem was the same as ours: more local democracy holding police forces to account. I welcome the Home Secretary's implication earlier that she has not entirely given up on that vision, but I hope that it is not just a smokescreen for retreat, as was the case with the provisions in the Counter-Terrorism Bill, when although she said that she was not changing her mind the reality was that the policy had changed fundamentally. I do not know what the Government's answer in this Bill actually is. It cannot be Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary, because however admirable its work is, it has not managed to reduce the disparities, despite many long years of trying; nor, for the same reasons, can it be the National Police Improvement Agency. We are left with a Polo policing reform—a policy with a hole in the middle. We are left with a vacuum, a void and intellectual vacuity.

Christopher Huhne: As the hon. Gentleman may know, local funding for the police has been steadily increasing as the amount of central Government grant is cut. There has to be an adequate amount of central Government grant to ensure that different needs are met across the country. That is a key matter and he is right to draw attention to it.  [ Interruption. ] The answer to the question clearly is to make sure that there is a settled system, that each police authority is happy with the outcome and that there are no changes from year to year. Local funding would then pick up the remainder. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that our policy is to move towards local income tax, which would be preferable to the precept on council tax.
	We can but speculate on the reasons for the Government's dramatic U-turn. Perhaps the Home Secretary realised that her plans for elected police authorities were fatally flawed. Such bodies would have been deeply unrepresentative and would have encouraged confrontational politics, because for the first time since 1997 the Government planned a new body elected under the first-past-the-post system. The Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, the Greater London assembly, the London Mayor and the European Parliament all use proportional or preference systems. In a force area, each borough that was a crime and disorder reduction partnership would elect one person as if it was a Westminster constituency.
	The result is clear, as we know from an analysis of the Green Paper proposals made by the Electoral Reform Society. Based on the 2007 local election results, it showed that the Conservatives would win two thirds of the seats on police authorities outside London with just 38 per cent. of the popular vote. The proposals would also have wiped out Labour representation in the south of England.
	The answer is not to ditch direct elections entirely, because the fundamental intellectual argument is correct, but for police authorities to be elected by a system of fair votes that ensures a proper ethnic and gender balance through the natural operation of a party's self-interest. In force areas with substantial ethnic minorities, such as London, Greater Manchester, Liverpool, West Yorkshire and the West Midlands, either the Green Paper system or, even worse, the Tory system of single elected commissioners for each force area would provide substantial parts of the population with little or no representation. We know that first past the post is biased against women and ethnic minorities, because the parties want to put up white, middle-class men in suits who are held to alienate the fewest voters—just look at us in the Chamber. The result of the proposals would be an alienation of many from the police that could ultimately prove dangerous—insensitive use of stop and search by the police was largely responsible for the Brixton riots.
	What of police reform has been left? Not much, I fear. The general requirement to take account of local views is a sop and it certainly cannot be enforced, as suggested, by the inspectorate. There are sensible provisions for collaboration between police forces and authorities, but we are not happy that the Home Secretary has the power to give directions from the centre in that matter. Nor are we happy that there is no duty to collaborate where it would be beneficial to the local communities involved. That would be a much more sensible way of proceeding than attempting to ensure that the Home Office was on every case.
	There is further centralisation and potential bureaucratisation in the proposals for a police senior appointments panel. The Home Secretary has the power to appoint both the chair and members, and to instruct the panel to carry out additional functions. The Association of Chief Police Officers has raised serious concerns, saying that it is
	"concerned at the unrelenting drift of policy and legislation towards weakening their status as office holders."
	Of course, police reform needs to encompass more than getting governance right. We need extra police on the streets, paid for by scrapping the identity card scheme. We would restore faith in the crime figures by taking them away from the Home Office and putting them under the direct supervision of the Office for National Statistics. We would publish not just crime figures but detection figures at local level.

Christopher Huhne: I am grateful to the former Home Secretary for his intervention. We have set out clearly the savings that would result from scrapping the ID card scheme, and at the last election they were audited by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, among others. I merely point out that when I was involved in another role—as shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury—I asked every Department how many of its top five IT schemes had overrun and failed to deliver on time. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that across Government, with the exception of three schemes, none was delivered on time or on budget, so as our calculations for the ID card scheme were based on the Government's published figures, I fear there will be a considerable undershoot in what is, after all, a serious and substantial IT scheme, which makes the others look like small beer.

Christopher Huhne: I am not giving way a third time. I need to make some progress.
	We would urgently review the police contract—of recent Home Secretaries, the right hon. Gentleman may have come closest to doing that. Lifetime employment for 30 years, a single point of entry—especially when trying to deal with white collar crime such as fraud—and pay linked to seniority rather than performance may not really be appropriate if we want to make sure that the organisation is fit and effective in dealing with the extremely important tasks it faces, especially in present circumstances, when all the evidence suggests an increase in acquisitive crime at a time when there are substantial constraints on budgets, as none of us needs reminding. It is therefore particularly important to look at efficiency. Unlike the Conservatives and Labour, we would respect pay awards from the independent police arbitration tribunal and allow officers to progress within, not just between, the ranks.
	Let me now turn away from police reform to some of the other provisions. There is no clearer example of why more legislation is no substitute for enforcing properly the existing law than alcohol-fuelled disorder. That is a real matter of much concern to many people, as I know from my constituents in Eastleigh. The Bill has more proposals for powers—for example, to remove young people to their homes or other places of safety, even if they have not committed an offence—yet there is abundant evidence that we are not using the powers already on the statute book. For example, in a parliamentary answer last month, the Home Secretary confirmed that no police service or local authority has yet issued a notice of proposal to designate an alcohol disorder zone; nor are we fully using the powers to cut alcohol sales to young people. I listened to what hon. Members have said about supermarket promotions and pricing, but, frankly, we have a lot of tools to deal with that very directly. I am afraid that the truth is that there is little evidence that behaviour is very sensitive to pricing, unless we are talking about a very substantial change in price.

Christopher Huhne: I take the hon. Gentleman's point, and I am grateful for that clarification.
	In sum, this is a rag-tag Bill that leaves out the central provisions that were originally meant to be its purpose, so there is no vision of how local accountability will be made real. It is merely a set of provisions that takes us back to the failed model of the past. It is a vote from an exhausted Government Bench for better yesterdays. It therefore teeters perilously close to the offence of wasting this House's time.
	True, there are some unexceptionable provisions, such as those on force collaboration, but even there the dead hand of Whitehall reaches out with powers of direction. Where there are new ideas in the Bill, such as those on prostitution, they are more likely to do harm than to reduce it. In most cases, the proposals are beyond amendment, although we as Liberal Democrats and therefore optimists will do our best to amend them in Committee. The Bill as a whole is stuffed with a mixture of the pernicious, the vexatious and the supernumerary, and we regret it.

Fiona Mactaggart: The hon. Gentleman is probably not aware that a child beggar in my constituency was at the centre of one of the very few successful prosecutions in this country of trafficking for begging. I am acutely aware of the issue, and I have had excellent support from the police and the Home Office in ensuring that prosecution and future further action. We are not talking about an either/or issue. We need to protect the human rights of exploited woman and exploited children, and I hope that we do.
	I have previously argued that the Government should adopt the approach taken by Sweden, which prohibits the purchase, rather than the sale, of any sexual service, but my blandishments have been resisted. Tonight, we are looking at a much narrower proposal. The only form of payment for sex that is outlawed in the Bill is cases in which the woman is controlled by another for gain. I do not believe that there is a single Member in the House today who would endorse payment for sex with a woman who is offering that service only because she is under the control of another person—her pimp, her trafficker, or the person maintaining her addiction.

Humfrey Malins: Of course nobody would endorse a man's doing such a thing, but does the hon. Lady think that he ought to have a defence if he knew not of the woman's position, and could not be expected to know of it—if he had made inquiries and was told, "There's no problem?"

Anthony Steen: One moment, if I may.
	The police tried to find the punters by advertising in the local newspapers. Six punters prepared to give evidence came forward. They would not have come forward if it had been a criminal offence for them to have had sex with that girl. That is an important point, on which I will not expand.
	My approach is also confirmed by the Professional Association for Family Courts and Probation Staff, which has said:
	"It is difficult to see how the measure can be policed. In order to obtain a conviction evidence will have to be gathered and it seems fairly essential that the prostitute herself would be required to make a statement. This is likely to incriminate herself and also affect her livelihood. The vast majority of prostitutes, it could be argued, are involved in some sort of control; whether this is a pimp or a manager, a receptionist or owner of a brothel."
	Is the plan to drive brothels out of business or underground, and is clause 13 simply a device to achieve the elimination of brothels, saunas and the like in the belief that they can be brushed out of society by an Act of Parliament? If so, it is nonsense. Prostitution has been here as long as the world has, and unlike King Canute we cannot stop the sea, whether we pass that clause or not. The association goes on:
	"It is also unclear what evidence would have to be produced by the police and Crown Prosecution Service to prove that an individual should have known that the woman was controlled for gain."
	There is total legal uncertainty. Then there is the recent evidence given to the Home Affairs Committee, to whose Chairman I pay tribute. The Met Detective Chief Superintendent Nigel Mawer said that one of the biggest problems that the police were encountering was the identification of trafficked victims, as many do not declare that they are victims and police officers are untrained to spot them. How, then, will the punter on the street recognise one? In the same evidence sitting, Police Commander Alan Gibson said that
	"it is very difficult to identify the difference between women who are involuntarily in prostitution and those that are voluntarily in prostitution because you cannot rely on what they tell you."
	It stands to reason that a trafficked victim might not confess to her would-be customer that she is trafficked; she might fear the repercussions and not say anything.
	My view is that clause 13 of the Bill needs considerable amendment if it is to be effective. The Government could have closed the existing loopholes in the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004 by making an offence of trafficking babies, infants and children, who cannot speak for themselves. The 2004 legislation needs strengthening. The Bill's provisions on the proceeds of crime and recovery of expenses should have enabled the proceeds from traffickers to fund support programmes for the trafficked victims; at the moment the taxpayer, through the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, picks up the tab.
	Unfortunately, clause 13 is a bold and radical provision that has not been thought through well enough. It is a start, but it will not work as we might wish. We all wish to see less human trafficking, which is now the third largest criminal industry after arms dealing and drug trafficking. But it will not be addressed until we recognise that it is born of poverty and economic desperation. Most victims are desperately seeking a new life and are tricked into being trafficked.

Anthony Steen: I will not.
	Following pressure from our all-party group on trafficking of women and children, our Government have been more proactive on trafficking than those of other European countries. However, we would still benefit from a trafficking rapporteur, a position that exists in Holland, from far better intelligence links with other European police forces and from better trained border and immigration officials. Human trafficking is the new slavery. The old slavery never disappeared; we should realise that the scale of new slavery continues to grow, with more people trafficked each year than ever were involved in the old slave trade 200 years ago. I give way to the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart).

Anthony Steen: I have given the example of what happened in Paignton just before Christmas when the punters came forward to give evidence. I am sure that we could build on that if the arrangements were different and punters were not seen as criminals.
	Everybody says that there is a tremendous number of trafficked women in Britain, but we have no idea of the figures. The human trafficking centre in Sheffield, which was set up by this Government—I pay tribute to them for that—spends nearly £2 million a year, but we ain't got the numbers. We do not know how many people are involved. It is pure guesswork and sensationalism when people talk about 4,000 to 6,000—the figure is probably in the hundreds, not the thousands. Whether it is hundreds or thousands, it is still too many, but the question is how to deal with those cases, which involve the poorest girls from the poorest countries of the world who have been duped and tricked.
	When those girls come into Britain, they are under the control of somebody. How do we get to that person? The best way is the approach taken by the police through Pentameter 1 and Pentameter 2, operations which have been extremely successful. Every police force in Britain has joined with other forces to outlaw human trafficking, but we cannot get the traffickers, and we should be concentrating on finding them. We have rightly tended to concentrate on the victims—the girls—and now on the punters, but we should be doing far more about the traffickers by making the situation much more penal and difficult for them to operate in. It is no good just doing it in Britain—it must be a European initiative whereby all the countries join forces. Britain and Holland, among others, are way ahead on this. I pay great tribute to the Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing, who is in his place, for taking that initiative forward, but I do not want him to go down the wrong track and end up making trafficking a far more difficult thing to unearth, with more women being pushed underground and not helped as we would like them to be.

Roberta Blackman-Woods: I welcome the Bill, particularly the measures to give local communities more say over the establishment of lap-dancing clubs in their area. I am truly pleased that the Government have listened to the campaign organised by Object, the Fawcett Society and many MPs, and that they have responded so helpfully to my ten-minute Bill on this subject. I have a particular debt of gratitude to Philip Kolvin, the solicitor who has been advising Object on finding a way forward through legislation.
	The key measure that I will talk about is clause 25. It is not without its problems, but I want to concentrate on what is good about it. As many Members will be aware, lap-dancing clubs are currently licensed solely under the Licensing Act 2003, and share the same licence as cafés and karaoke bars. Clause 25 will reform this by allowing local authorities to license lap-dancing clubs in the same way as sex shops and sex cinemas via the adoption of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982. Clause 25 creates a third category of establishment—a sex encounter venue, defined as a venue where live visual performances for the purpose of sexual stimulation are provided for the direct or indirect financial gain of the operator.
	The critical aspect of the Bill, therefore, is that local authorities are now allowed to reclassify lap-dancing clubs as sex encounter venues. The Local Government Association is backing the measure, as it will allow councils to impose conditions on lap dancing venues when granting licences or to refuse licences altogether. As we know, the current categorisation has been wholly inadequate, and means that local councils could refuse a licence only by arguing that one or more of the licensing objectives under the 2003 Act would be breached. That is possible, but has proved very difficult in practice.
	Many of us arguing for a change in legislation did so on the basis of getting the law changed so that local people would have a much greater say over whether to have a lap-dancing club in their area. The reforms contained in the Bill will allow authorities that choose to license lap-dancing clubs or similar as sex encounter venues to be able to consider important factors such as gender equality, the character of a locality and whether a lap-dancing club is appropriate for a local area. The reform will also give local authorities control over the total number of venues licensed in their area and empower local people by allowing a greater number to raise objections on wider grounds. In addition to the LGA supporting these reforms, we should note that the National Organisation of Residents Associations also supports them, as does a wide coalition of councillors and community and women's groups, including Rape Crisis England and Wales.
	The Lap Dancing Association acknowledges that the current legislation does not allow community concerns to be taken into account when granting a licence but supports only voluntary measures to address the problems or argues that they can be addressed by reforming planning legislation. I would argue that that is not the answer either. As we know, the current legislation does not allow for sufficient consideration of wider community objectives such as tourism, regeneration policies or changes to the character of the area, or for the views of women who have to walk past such venues to be taken into account. The vital point is that those issues are unlikely to be addressed through the planning system, even if it were reformed.
	The solution contained in the Bill—to create a third type of sex establishment, a sex encounter venue, to exist alongside sex cinemas and sex shops—is the only sensible way forward. As I said, the definition of a sex encounter venue is one where nude entertainment is provided before a live audience for the direct or indirect financial gain of the organiser or entertainer. The nude entertainment must be of a nature that, ignoring financial gain, must reasonably be assumed to be provided solely or principally for the purpose of sexually stimulating any member of the audience. That is an important definition, because it should rule out nudity as part of a dramatic performance being covered by the reforms.
	Some other issues and concerns have been raised by the Lap Dancing Association. I think that they can all be refuted quite easily, although I do not have time to go into them all now. Its first, and major, criticism of the Bill is that lap dancing is entertainment, not a sex encounter. I would argue instead, as have others, that the fundamental nature of the transaction is that a man pays a woman to take her clothes off and place her sexual organs near his face. The notion that this is not part of the commercial sex industry is not seriously sustainable. The LDA also argues that councils have sufficient powers to impose restrictions on premises' licences. We know from the operation of the 2003 Act to date that those powers are impossible to operate in practice. The LDA's third major objection to changing the legislation is that the industry will go underground, but that could be an argument against regulating anything. If it does, it will be the duty of the enforcement authorities to prosecute. In any case, that is an argument for more, not less, regulation.
	It would appear to most sensible people that bringing lap dancing into the same category as sex cinemas and sex shops and licensing them is a sensible response to the recent proliferation of such venues, enabling authorities to exercise greater control if they wish to. However, before everyone thinks that we are home and dry, I should like to outline two problems with the proposed reforms and ask the Public Bill Committee to consider them further. The first and most significant problem is that premises holding lap dancing events less often than once month will be exempt from the reforms.
	As it stands, the Bill exempts from the reforms premises hosting lap dancing for less than once a month, but a large number of venues in the UK hold monthly lap-dancing nights and would fall under this category. Lap-dancing clubs and agencies cater specifically for that sub-market, which is likely to grow if the loophole remains, especially given the current economic climate of falling alcohol revenues in the licensed trade. Residents with objections to a venue hosting lap-dancing nights less than once a month in their area will still find themselves objecting under the limited grounds of the Licensing Act 2003. The second problem is that the reforms are not mandatory.
	I want to thank the Minister for taking the issue seriously. He will know that my interest in this area arose because of a proposal to have a lap-dancing venue in a totally inappropriate location in Durham. Residents there are very much behind the legislation, but they stress that it is important for the loophole to be tightened so that it is not possible for those operating lap-dancing clubs to use temporary events notices as a way round the legislation. This is a serious issue and I hope that it will be addressed by amendments in Committee so that we get an important piece of legislation that gives local communities a greater voice. On the question of whether the provisions should be mandatory, we need to be careful that we do not have a postcode lottery, where some communities get more say over lap-dancing clubs in their area while others do not, because their local authority has not taken the legislation on board.

Henry Bellingham: It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr. Blackman-Woods), who I thought made a very thoughtful speech.
	This is the 26th major crime Bill introduced by this Government, but we still have a police force that is weighed down by bureaucracy and excessive paperwork. The overall level of crime has come down slightly, but we all know that knife crime is up sharply, and that violent crime is up by nearly 80 per cent. This is a skeleton Bill in many respects, and a great deal of legislation will flow from it in the form of statutory instruments—an arrangement that always worries me.
	On policing, we know that 14 per cent. of all officers' time is spent on patrol, whereas 20 per cent. is spent on paperwork. According to the No. 10 strategy unit, it takes 11 and a half hours for a police officer to process an arrest, and the Flanagan report was rightly critical of the burden of bureaucracy facing our police forces throughout the country. One of my regrets is that the Bill singularly fails to get a grip on that problem. Why have the Government not gone further on the Flanagan report? Surely this is a wasted opportunity.
	I mentioned the senior appointments panel in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). Clause 2 places the panel on a statutory footing, and I ask the Minister why. Will that not create extra cost, and will it not be yet another bureaucratic body? Why, for example, will the panel members and the panel chairman be paid? Surely it will be far better to find volunteers to do such work, particularly when the budget is under so much pressure. I hope that that point will be looked at carefully in Committee. I have every confidence that my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Ruffley) will get a grip on the matter, because it is important.
	A number of right hon. and hon. Members have spoken about the provisions in the Bill that deal with prostitution. As my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) said a moment ago, Her Majesty's Government are right to try to protect vulnerable children from exploitation. They are right to try to tackle the exploitation and trafficking taking place. I believe that the level of trafficking is quite appalling, but I have concerns about the creation of a strict liability offence. I am concerned about the removal of intent—or, as we lawyers call it, the mens rea. There is a chance of unintended consequences, and the provisions are riddled with anomalies. When there are prosecutions, they will be a lawyer's dream.
	I take on board the points made by the Chairman of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), and I thought the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne), who is not now in his place, made a number of excellent points on this subject. I endorse what the Bar Council recently said when it pointed out that the offence as currently drafted risks convictions that may be seen as unfair by reasonable people. Such convictions would bring the criminal law into disrepute, particularly given the stigma that would result. I urge the Minister to look at that matter again.
	The hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) made an impassioned and impressive speech, and I can tell her that that those of us who are picking one or two holes in these provisions do not in any way want to be soft on child trafficking. We do not in any way want to stand up for the people who feel they have to, in unfortunate circumstances, go and use prostitutes. We are concerned, however, about bringing in credible law that will stand the test of being put through the courts.
	I believe that the under-18s involved are the real victims. They need practical help and support, and should not be criminalised. I agree with the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris), who talked about harm reduction. The Bill does not abolish the power to prosecute a child over 10 for offences under section 57 of the Street Offences Act 1959, although it does amend that legislation. It is a big mistake that it does not abolish the power to prosecute those children. I have received briefings from a number of eminent organisations, including one from the YWCA, which makes it clear that
	"The numbers of children aged under 18 who have been prosecuted under s. 57 are extremely low but the fact that the offence remains is potentially very damaging. In particular we are concerned that fear of prosecution deters young women from seeking help when they need it most."
	Similar comments were made by Barnardo's and the Standing Committee for Youth Justice. An overwhelming number of briefings and conclusions have been put to right hon. and hon. Members, saying that the Government have missed an opportunity. Furthermore, I think that the Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing said in response to a debate on the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill last year that the Government would consider this matter further. I am disappointed that the Bill today does not address this point. I hope that the Minister will tell us why it does not, and give us some assurance that the Government will look at the matter again.
	The provisions in the Bill dealing with extradition worry me, because again we have a wasted opportunity. The Extradition Act 2003 made various amendments to the law as it then stood and implemented in this country the European arrest warrant, which removed the requirement of dual criminality for certain offences. A UK court had always had to determine that a prima facie case had been made, but it is now enough if a European arrest warrant is issued by an EU country in respect of a listed offence.
	My concern is that such offences are so broad that many are meaningless. Some are described as "computer-related crime", or "swindling". We recently had a extradition case between Poland and Lithuania involving a young adult who was charged with piglet rustling. That type of case brings extradition into ill repute. The Government should take a long hard look at the European arrest warrant, and use the Bill as an opportunity to tighten it up and improve the situation. The Government seem to be peddling the presumption that all EU countries have the same fair and equal systems of justice. That is a dangerous assumption, because it manifestly is not the case. We are in danger of a serious backlash on the European arrest warrant unless the Bill is used to do something about it.
	In the case of non-EU countries, we all know that the Home Secretary, by way of Order in Council, can remove the need for specified countries to produce prima facie evidence to support a request for extradition. We know about the arrangement with the United States through the case of the NatWest or Enron three, but similar Orders in Council have been used to bring in such procedures in the case of countries such as Azerbaijan, Georgia, Russia and Turkey. That concerns me a great deal. The key point in the case of America—I assume that it is the same for the other countries—is that there is not genuine reciprocity. If we are to make changes to our law and put the liberties of UK citizens at risk, there has to be full reciprocity.

Sally Keeble: I wish to focus on part 3 of the Bill, which is about alcohol. I very much welcome the proposals, but I would like the action to go further and include some of the measures that were in my ten-minute Bill on alcohol pricing and promotions. In particular, my concerns are about the impact of alcohol on young people. I welcome the fact that the proposed measures are directed particularly at drinking among young people.
	We all know the general figures about alcohol consumption, but among the young the figures are getting very much worse. By the age of 13, more young people are drinking than not, and by the age of 15 one third are drinking once or more a week. Among those aged from 11 to 15 who drink regularly, the average weekly alcohol consumption has risen from 5.3 units in 1990 to 11.4 units in 2006. Those figures are provided by the Royal College of Nursing and shows a high level of alcohol consumption among very young children—well over the Government limits for adults. The issue is not just the amount that young people are drinking; it is also where they are drinking it. Research shows that one third of 15-year-olds drink, and that one third of those do so in public places. All the provisions about drinking alcohol in public places are therefore particularly important when it comes to young people.
	I was grateful to the National Association of Head Teachers for supporting my ten-minute Bill. It was concerned about the impact of drinking with regard to young people missing school, turning up late or turning up with hangovers. The Police Federation was supportive because of the obvious links between drinking and crime, which are particularly bad in the case of young people. One third of all deaths caused by alcohol are from injuries suffered when people are drunk, and that is most common among 16 to 24-year-olds. Young people are more likely than others to be involved in alcohol-related crime, and are the most likely people to be injured or killed as a result.
	We know from the British Medical Association, which also supported my Bill, about the serious consequences of the increase in drinking for the physical and mental health of young people. Over Christmas in Northamptonshire, there was a very welcome reduction in the number of people arrested for drink-driving; the number of arrests fell from 112 to 98. However, among 17 to 24-year-olds the figures did not go down. In fact, the county police said that while young drivers formed 10 per cent. of all drivers, they formed 35 per cent. of those arrested for drink-driving. It seems that we need to consider specific measures to deal with the particular problems associated with young people and alcohol. On that basis, the relevant measures in the Bill are particularly important, even though they might seem draconian and even though people might ask why we should adopt them rather than others.
	There are to be increased penalties for selling alcohol, which chimes with the public's concern not just about the symptoms of children's drinking but about trying to cut it off at source. People are concerned about the fact that however much one might try, there is still a pattern of young people drinking at home before they go out or drinking in parks, perhaps because they cannot get into on-licences. They are certainly drinking alcohol obtained from off-licences.
	The "three strikes and you're out" rule, too, is important in the context of young people drinking in public places. Of course, there will need to be some care in its management and interpretation, for example in deciding whether a park is a public place. The police will need to give some thought to how they manage it, but we must bear in mind the fact that in Northampton town centre, for example, there is a ban on drinking in public. The police use such measures on a voluntary basis, and there is a possibility of making them available nationally and in an organised way.
	One matter that I ask the Government to consider really carefully is the mandatory code. I very much welcome it, but it will need to be tough and it will need substantial measures to deal with the real problems that arise from alcohol sales. Why are there to be only nine conditions? Why cannot the appropriate number of conditions emerge from the consultation? Of course, the code will depend on secondary legislation, but will it cover labelling and the number of units in a drink, advertising, promotions, and the stocking and location of shelves in supermarkets, so that shelves stocking alcohol are clearly signed and located in particular places? Otherwise, as people walk around shops where the primary purpose is to sell food they become increasingly aware of alcohol on the shelves and piled up on the floor next to the till. That particularly applies before a bank holiday or when there is a big sports match on TV. Will there be provision in the mandatory code to deal with some of the price cuts and discounting that are so incredibly damaging?
	I believe strongly that there is a real need for much tougher action to deal with the problem of alcohol sales, particularly to younger people. The Sheffield research showed clearly the link between price and availability, and consumption. It made the case strongly for minimum pricing of alcohol. As I said in an intervention on the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne), the research shows that a 40p minimum price would cut binge drinking, would not affect responsible drinkers, and would reduce hospital admissions by 41,000 a year and crime by 16,000 a year. Minimum pricing is strongly supported by many groups that are concerned with the matter, and by the on-licence trade because it would provide more of a level playing field between the on-licence and off-licence trade.
	Will the Minister talk to his colleagues and consider whether tax concessions on white cider could be changed in the next Budget cycle? The tax regime for cider and perry pricing was designed to encourage small producers and fruit growers, not to subsidise some of the most pernicious forms of alcohol that are sold in the shops. Anyone who has seen White Lightning piled up on the bottom shelves of supermarkets knows that its price way undercuts that of other drinks. The duty on a pint of cider, whatever its strength, is only 16p, but it is between 35p and 59p on beer, depending on its alcoholic strength. There is no logic or rationale for such a price differential.
	My concerns about binge drinking are rooted in my constituents' experiences. One constituent's son was killed after a happy hour promotion, and people who live near a park in Moulton Leys have had their lives made a misery by young people who gather there, and whose behaviour deteriorates when they are given drink. I welcome the proposals, but I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to give them greater consideration and to be tougher.

Humfrey Malins: That is an unreal comment. I am referring to a situation in which there is no defence whatever for going to a prostitute, whether it is a women going to a male gigolo—prostitution works with both men and women—or a man going to a women prostitute. It seems to be wrong in principle that there is simply no defence available if those women are controlled in their activities.
	The next part of clause 13 says that it is
	"irrelevant...where in the world the sexual services are to be provided".
	That means, unless I am mistaken, that a person who arranges for sexual services in a foreign country from somebody who may or may not be controlled may be guilty of an offence if that person is controlled, even if the act is to take place abroad. How odd it would be and what bad law it would be if a person in this country were convicted of an offence in this country in relation to something that had not yet happened—but which he had arranged—in a country where such activity is entirely legal.
	I need hardly draw to your attention, Madam Deputy Speaker—in fact, I think I may have to draw this to your attention, because you will not know about it—that in certain countries there are state-run brothels. Indeed, some brothels are organised by the state or a municipal authority. Presumably those organisers have, strictly speaking, some form of control, through rent or a levy on the takings of the person concerned. It seems ridiculous that a person may go to an official brothel abroad or to a country where prostitution is entirely lawful and find himself or herself guilty of a crime in this country. That is wrong and the Bill will need amendment.
	I will tell you one thing, Madam Deputy Speaker: for all the Minister's talk about consulting widely on the provision, I can tell him that those to whom I have spoken, in the police and throughout the judiciary, think that clause 13 as drafted will be bad law. They think that there will be a huge problem with evidential matters. Let us imagine someone pleading not guilty at Camberwell Green magistrates court to going to a prostitute in Taiwan who was controlled. I am trying not to be flippant, but let us imagine the problems in calling evidence, not only from abroad if the prostitute was abroad, but in the UK. There will be huge evidential problems. My forecast is that in the first year of the provisions being on the statute book, there will be few if any prosecutions, and all this at a time when the plight of prostitutes in this country is dire, because of other matters, such as pimping and drugs, to which we should give much more attention.
	Enough of that. What of other matters, Madam Deputy Speaker? What of clause 26? This touches on my earlier point about law that is not enforced—law that is ridiculous. Let us look at clause 26 for a moment. It increases the penalty for consuming alcohol in a designated public place from level 2 to level 4—that is, from something like £500 to £2,500. All that the Home Secretary could say to me earlier was that the proposal sends out a message. But what on earth is the use of that, when in the past few years nobody has been fined more than £250? Does the Minister know that under the fines system, which, by the Government's own strictures, now means that fines have to be within certain confines relating to the defendant's means, it will be practically impossible to fine anybody more than £100 for that offence, because they are all on benefits or low incomes? The proposal is absolute nonsense—yet again, a flagship headline that will get the Government overnight popularity.
	Clause 29 creates the offence of persistently possessing alcohol in a public place three times in 12 consecutive months. Why three times? It is ridiculous. Why not twice? Why not once? Why not four times? The Government get worse. Under the Licensing Act 2003, it is an offence to sell alcohol within three months to children on three occasions. Wow! Look what is happening now: "We're going to change it to selling on two separate occasions. This is the flagship!" Is the Minister serious? Does he think that there have been a lot of prosecutions for selling three times? Is it not an offence to sell alcohol to children once? What is the magic about two?
	What on earth is going on? The answer is not a lot. We are blessed with Home Office Ministers who, frankly, thrive on the oxygen of a good headline and who pass more and more laws, each of them meaningless and not enforced, and with a Government who gloss over the truth of what is happening on the streets. Until we get a Government who enforce the existing law, our crime and disorder problems will continue to escalate.

Lynda Waltho: I welcome the Bill, particularly the measures that relate to the licensing of lap dancing and those that tackle alcohol-fuelled crime.
	I have been working on the issue of licensing lap-dancing clubs over the past two and a half years or so. Constituents first contacted me when the Picture House nightclub in my constituency applied to be a lap-dancing club. It would have been the second lap-dancing club in the town, within a matter of yards of the first. Despite strong and convincing objections, the licence was granted. That brought home to me just how large the loophole in the legislation is and how little the quality of life and the views of my constituents counted.
	The current four licensing objectives are insufficient and do not reflect the concerns that a community might have, including about the character and quality of life in an area and how residents, local businesses, workers and shoppers may be affected. Such things cannot be considered under the present system. It was unacceptable that someone could object to their neighbour building a porch or a conservatory, but not to a lap-dancing club next door or more than 100 yd from their home.
	I became involved in the Object Fawcett campaign, which built up a coalition of MPs, peers, academics, councillors, residents and grass-roots support throughout the country. I was a co-sponsor of a ten-minute Bill dealing with the issue and tabled an early-day motion that received 119 signatories. I welcome the fact that the Tory party now officially supports the measures, albeit late to the fight and after a great deal of adverse publicity arising from the offer of a voucher to the Rocket lap-dancing club, during the party conference in Birmingham. I am told that the Tory shadow Chancellor—he still is the shadow Chancellor, isn't he?—is fond of saying that the Tories will make a difference. Well, they certainly did in Birmingham, because takings rocketed during their conference week in Brum.
	I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and my hon. Friends the Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing and the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr. Campbell) for picking up the issue and for listening to my constituents.
	I welcome clause 25(4), which will allow local authorities to set a limit on the number of sex establishments of a particular type in an area. Interestingly, I have received correspondence on that point from women in the business who are concerned about the ease with which establishments could open. The opening of too many establishments could affect the little control that those women have over what they have to do for their money. Quite simply, if a woman in the club down the road was allowing punters to touch her, other women might have to do the same or possibly more to keep their punters.
	It became clear to me through speaking to current and ex-lap dancers that, more often than not, it is they who are being exploited. The majority put up with working conditions that no union would allow and little or no employment rights. For a pitch—that is, for the privilege of dancing for gentlemen—they have to pay anything from £50 up to £250. Those women pay for drinks and costumes, and they are encouraged to pump their gentlemen for expensive cocktails and champagne. The women do not get to keep their earnings and many cannot join a union.
	I am glad that Ministers were not convinced by the arguments of the chairman of the Lap Dancing Association, Mr. Simon Warr, who claimed to the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport that lap dancing is "not sexually stimulating" and that clubs provide hospitality rather than sexual services. Bizarrely, and for the first time in my life, I agree with Peter Stringfellow, who told the same Committee:
	"of course it is sexually stimulating".
	However, I did not agree with his further comment:
	"so is a disco, so is a young girl flashing away with her...knickers showing."
	Of course lap dancing has some form of sex. Given Mr. Stringfellow's well reported support of the Conservative party, I wonder whether he represents its more erudite wing.
	Along with my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr. Blackman-Woods), I am concerned about the exemption in proposed new paragraph 2A(3)(b) of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982, in clause 25(3), for premises holding lap-dancing events less than once a month. Temporary event notices cannot be opposed by a local council and are automatically granted. Residents therefore find themselves without even the limited means of objecting under the Licensing Act 2003. I believe that that contradicts the main aim underpinning the proposed reforms, which is to empower local communities as fully as possible. I argue that exemptions should be amended, to avoid creating further loopholes.
	I am the chair of the all-party group on alcohol misuse, and I am particularly concerned about the proposals on alcohol. The Bill contains an enabling power for a statutory code of practice on the supply of alcohol, allowing the Secretary of State to prescribe mandatory conditions for all licensed premises without conditions. I support the measure, because the aim of encouraging the more responsible sale of alcohol is important. My concern, which is shared by Alcohol Concern, is that there is no centrally held register of licensees. That means that individuals who have had their licence revoked may apply for a new one in another local authority area, which cannot easily access information about the applicant's former conduct. It seems sensible to introduce a centrally held register of licensees, and I urge the Minister to consider that proposal.
	I broadly welcome the measures on the new offence of persistently possessing alcohol in a public place, about which my constituents and the local police are concerned. However, we need to be aware that simply putting more young people into the criminal justice system is not always the most productive way of addressing the problem of alcohol misuse. In addition to the new powers, we need to focus on more early intervention for people of all ages. Schemes such as the Home Office-approved one in Dudley borough, run by Aquarius, deserve more investment. The scheme aims to reduce alcohol-related reoffending by changing people's behaviour, and it is a proven success. A recent evaluation showed that, among the people who had attended, overall reoffending in Dudley was down by 49 per cent., and alcohol-related reoffending was down by 12 per cent. The scheme is also accessing people at an earlier stage in their drinking, including younger people, binge drinkers and perpetrators of domestic violence, none of whom would normally contact an alcohol service. Such schemes make a huge difference across the borough, and we should do more to support them across the country.
	In addition, although I support the extension of the power to issue a direction to leave, we must be wary of fast-tracking young people into the criminal justice system. More investment is required in outreach youth workers and in positive intervention by the services. I hope that my own Tory-controlled Dudley council will take note of that, as it is currently cutting youth services. Young people should first be offered a programme of support if they are found to be persistently drinking to excess in public and need to change their behaviour. A welfare and social response should surely precede any punitive one for the 10-to-15 age group.
	Before I conclude, I should like to say a few words in general support of the Bill, particularly in the light of my experience with the West Midlands police force through the police parliamentary scheme. I worked alongside many officers across all departments of the force, and obtained a warts-and-all view of the work that those men and women do for us, day in and day out. I came away with a renewed respect for the job that they do in the most difficult circumstances, often with provocation from members of the public that even a mild-mannered lady such as myself found it hard to rise above. I know that the falling crime rate—now at its lowest in the west midlands for 18 years—is due to the dedication of those police officers and to the continued assistance of new powers to enable them to do their jobs effectively and professionally. I am sure that many of the measures in the Bill will add to their effectiveness.
	I support the Bill and I am grateful that my many concerns and those of my constituents have been acted on, but I would really welcome clarification and assurance on the issues that still concern me. They include lap dancing, temporary licences, the registration of alcohol licensees, and the safety and support of young problem drinkers.

Andrew Slaughter: I generally welcome the Bill and commend much of it, including parts 2 and 3. It is perhaps a shame that Opposition Members have spoken against the clauses on prostitution and, indeed, some of the clauses relating to the control of binge drinking and alcohol abuse. Like my hon. Friends the Members for City of Durham (Dr. Blackman-Woods) and for Stourbridge (Lynda Waltho), I am going to concentrate in the brief time I have available on the proposals relating to lap dancing in clause 25, as the number of such clubs has mushroomed in recent years and caused difficulties for a great number of hon. Members in their constituencies.
	The reclassification of lap-dancing or pole-dancing clubs as sex encounter venues is a very welcome step. Since the Licensing Act 2003, the number of such clubs is estimated to have doubled approximately to about 300. It is fair to say that that was an unintended consequence of the legislation, which effectively disenfranchised local communities and made it extremely difficult for licences to be withheld from those establishments.
	That was brought home to me very keenly towards the end of last year in respect of an application for such a club in the west Kensington area—an area that I represented for about 20 years as a councillor and hope, following boundary changes at the next election, to represent again as an MP. It is an issue that has affected many areas in London and, indeed, outside it. In this case, a notorious establishment called the Fox tavern was bought by a company rather luridly called Passion Nights, which had no previous experience of running such places. It sought to open it as a lap-dancing club for up to 600 people with a large number of private booths and other insalubrious trappings that go along with such institutions. Needless to say, like many of these establishments, it was to be located in a densely populated residential area, with all that one expects to go with it in the way of schools, community facilities and so forth. It does not take much imagination to realise that that club would entirely change the character of that area. Despite that rather obvious fact, the experience of a number of my hon. Friends elsewhere has shown how difficult it is under existing legislation to challenge such licences. In those circumstances, one must try to prove a hypothesis: one must try to prove that something will happen for which there is clearly no current evidence, because the establishment is not currently there, and the criteria for refusal of licences are extremely narrow and not directed at the nuisances that residents usually expect such establishments to cause.
	Fortunately, things have gone reasonably well thus far in this case, but that is entirely due to the fact that within 10 days of its becoming common knowledge that the application was being submitted, more than 25 per cent. of all residents in the catchment area had signed petitions and presented the local authority with over 1,000 objections to the club's opening. Owing to the quality of those submissions and the organisation involved—I know that a great deal of organisation was involved, because I gave evidence at the licensing hearing—the authority refused the application. It was one of very few applications that were refused.
	However, the matter does not end there. Next month there will be an appeal in the magistrates court, and I strongly suspect that even if the residents win again, the matter will proceed to the High Court, because the people who have the estimated £2 million needed to develop such a project have deep enough pockets to exceed, in the legal process, whatever the residents can come up with.
	The clause is good news. I say that not only because of my own reading of it, but because organisations such as Object and the Fawcett Society—which have campaigned nationally on the subject—generally welcome it, and believe that it will do the trick when it comes to new licences. Some of my hon. Friends have already mentioned the caveats, so I will not go over the ground again. There is, however, an opportunity for temporary or occasional licences.
	Two matters concern me particularly, given my own experience. First, I want to know how transitional provisions will be dealt with. We understand that they will be dealt with by means of a statutory instrument, but it would be helpful if—perhaps not today, but certainly in Committee—the Minister could give some indication of how the Government expect existing licences, and the process of renewal and challenge of those licences, to be dealt with. Given the mushrooming of facilities of this kind over the last five years, the problem clearly does not relate only to new licences dating from the time of enactment.
	The second issue, which I think has already been covered by my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham, is the issue of choice. There is an adopted rather than a mandatory provision here. Indeed, it is a double adopted provision, because it constitutes an amendment to schedule 3 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982. There will be a "postcode lottery" effect. There will, I suspect, be displacement between authorities, some being less robust and some being more robust, and there is likely to be a substantial delay while authorities take advice and decide whether to adopt the new legislation. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to look at that issue again, and to consider particularly the matter of transitional provision. Notwithstanding that caveat, however, the legislation is very welcome.
	I did not intend to say anything particularly partisan, but I am afraid that the door was opened by the newly appointed shadow Home Secretary, the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). Perhaps it was his enthusiasm for his new job that gave him the temerity to claim credit for the Conservative party for coming up with these ideas. That, I think, is simply churlish. I think that credit should be given where it is due. The Conservative party's record on this issue is actually very bad, whether we view it at national or at local level.
	Because she is a very modest person, my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge did not mention the fact that she and my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham had conducted a co-ordinated campaign, including an early-day motion which, when I last saw it, had attracted 119 signatures in the last Session. Four were from Conservative Members. That is how much the Conservative party cared at that stage. Conservative Members' support in debates raising the issue, and their support for the 10-minute Bill, were singularly lacking. I am glad to note that residents' pressure has belatedly brought them to the table to support this recommendation, but I think it would be rather better for them to give credit to the people who have pursued the agenda over the last two to three years than to try, in a rather tawdry way, to claim the credit now.
	Last year the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Sutcliffe), wrote to all local authorities asking whether they had any concerns. My Conservative council wrote back, saying that the current restrictions
	"appear to be working well and are therefore not a problem".
	There is a degree of complacency in that statement. My hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge made a good point, even though it was jeered by Opposition Members. There are lurid examples of Conservatives and their organisations not simply not opposing institutions of this kind, but giving support to them in a rather childish and schoolboyish way.
	I hope that the Conservative party has learned its lesson on this matter. I hope this provision will be toughened, and that it will not be subjected to the same sort of parsimonious comments that we have heard so far about the rest of the Bill. On that basis, I hope that the Bill will make progress and that the specific provision on lap-dancing clubs will be strengthened.

Nadine Dorries: I wish to speak first on part 1 of the Bill, but only briefly because I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich (Mr. Carswell) will do it justice when he is called to speak.
	The Government have missed a huge opportunity to be bold and to go the full way by having elected police commissioners. Instead, they have proposed the direct election of some members of police authorities, which is a cop-out. I am unsure precisely how that will work in practice, but people will elect members to various police authorities, and that will generate no interest or excitement. I cannot see in my mind people pouring out of their homes to go to the polling booths to vote for members of a locally elected police authority, because it will not be accountable. It is the police commissioner who would have been accountable. Such accountability would have been an exciting development. It would have been great if people could have gone to the polls to vote not only for their MPs and local councillors, but for the police commissioner as well. Let us imagine that after such a vote crime had gone up in their area, they were unhappy with what had been happening on their streets and there was no visible policing; if, when the next election came around, they could point the finger at somebody and say, "That's your fault", they would go back into the polling booths to vote again in droves. Imagine the other advantages such as the prudence that would be applied to police budgets, and also in relation to how the budgets would be spent and the priorities adopted by the police commissioner—which I am sure would have mirrored those requested by the local residents.
	That is what people want. Every area has different policing needs; every community knows what it wants in terms of policing. There was a chance to offer people the opportunity to vote for somebody who was visibly accountable and responsible for keeping their streets safe. It is a great shame that the Government have missed out on that huge opportunity—they have ducked out of it.
	Turning to part 2 of the Bill, I wish to speak particularly about clauses 16 and 17. Clause 16 addresses orders under the Street Offences Act 1959 to do with
	"loitering or soliciting for purposes of prostitution".
	In effect, a court will order that prostitutes attend three meetings. This is a prime example of making bad law. Let me read out a passage:
	"The purpose of an order under subsection (2A) is to assist the offender...to—
	(a) address the causes of the conduct constituting the offence, and
	(b) find ways to cease engaging in such conduct in the future."
	A named person is to carry that process out with the offender. I never thought I would stand up in this Chamber and find myself agreeing with the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris)—in fact, it is bizarre that I am doing so, and I will need to sit down for a minute or so after my speech to get over it. We have had prostitution since biblical times. One would think that after 2,000 years we would know how to accommodate such a profession within a civilised society. It is not possible to outlaw prostitution. It will not be possible by having three meetings with a prostitute to get them to change their mind about being involved in that career. It is not a matter of career choice; boys and girls do not say when asked in school what they want to do when they grow up, "I would like to be a prostitute." It is probably the only job where death is an unintended consequence.

Douglas Carswell: I am deeply disappointed that the Bill does not contain measures that would genuinely give local people a say over policing where they live. Clause 1 will impose a statutory requirement for police authorities to take into account the public's views on crime and policing. That is a far cry from having directly elected police authorities—an idea that Ministers were toying with. Let us imagine that Parliament had a statutory requirement to take into account the views of the electorate instead of holding elections to decide who sits here. That is the difference between what the Green Paper promised and what is in the Bill.
	It is difficult to see how clause 1 will lead to much change. It certainly does not enable local people to hold a single individual to account for how effectively, or otherwise, their community is policed. Rather than empower local people, clause 2 does the precise opposite. Instead of the people deciding who runs the police, the decision will be left to yet another quango—the police senior appointments panel, whose members will be appointed centrally by the Home Secretary. It is not merely that the Bill is not localist; it is centralising.
	Clauses 10 to 12 further diminish the local discretion of local police forces. Rather than allow locally accountable police forces freedom to run their affairs, the Bill extends the power of Home Office officials to micro-manage local police practice and procedure. The system of police accountability that we have today is a product of the tripartite system established under the Police Act 1964, and of its steady erosion under Governments of both parties in the years since. Police authorities, which are supposed to represent and supervise the police, have become weak, ineffectual and subject to the whim of Home Office target setters.
	Far from being vehicles for democratic scrutiny, local police authorities are all too often anonymous quangos made up of local worthies. Few people know that their police authority even exists, let alone who sits on it. The Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), seemed to imply that that was somehow a shortcoming of the people. In fact, it shows what is inevitable when police authorities are appointed rather than elected.
	Far from holding chief constables to account, police authority members all too often see it as their job to support their chief constable when there are attacks on his or her performance. Chief constables certainly do not seem to regard police authorities as bodies that exist to set their agendas or priorities. Do not take my word for it; take the word of former chief constable Andy Hayman, writing in  The Times:
	"When I was a chief constable, I regularly called my police authority chairman to appraise him of sensitive operations. He would occasionally seek clarification but the last thing I expected was for him to question...whether the operation was appropriate."
	Thus to some chief constables, even to be questioned by the people's representatives is objectionable. Police authorities are a great forum in which to have tea and biscuits with the chief constable; they are not the forum for setting out, in no uncertain terms, what the local community expects of their police. I use the term "their police" deliberately, because as Robert Peel understood,
	"The police are the public and the public are the police".
	Without proper local accountability and local democratic legitimacy, the police are increasingly losing the confidence of the public. Without local accountability, there is less local legitimacy, and there is alienation between the police and the public. Again, do not take my word for it; take the word of the Government's own Home Office adviser, Louise Casey. She recently spoke of the collapse of trust in the criminal justice system. The Government's former respect tsar is right to be concerned about surveys that show that only one third of people still have great confidence in the police.
	Conspicuously absent from the Bill are measures to allow for direct election to police authorities. Bold reform and localism have been defeated by the Sir Humphrey Appleby types. On 18 December, in the pages of  The  Guardian rather than in this House, the Home Secretary revealed that plans to make the police more accountable to local communities through direct elections had been abandoned owing to pressure from senior officers. Also cited were fears of local police falling under the control of political extremists or single-issue campaigners. Ten seconds of reflection show that it is nonsense to argue that we cannot have directly elected police chiefs for fear of the British National party. Surely that is an argument against electing people to run local councils—or, indeed, against elections to Parliament. People could vote for extremists, but overwhelmingly they do not.
	As for the fear that a single-issue group might take control, do we mean single-issue groups such as those that want to lower crime, or groups of citizens who want a more robust approach to crime and violence where they live? I do not think that the Home Secretary really believes that those are valid reasons for not having elected police chiefs. I believe that she has bottled it because she has been lobbied by powerful vested interests—by the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Local Government Association and the Association of Police Authorities. Indeed, I believe that one of her predecessors as Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett), said as much in an earlier question. We know that the Association of Police Authorities has used public money and part of its Home Office funding to engage a lobbyist to lobby the Home Office. Thus does the quango state use public money to lobby itself. So much for the LGA's belief in localism.
	Others suggest that policing needs to be left to the experts—the same experts, presumably, who presided over a massive hike in crime and violence, and who for years told us that high-visibility policing was a waste of resources. We all like the idea of the expert—the disinterested technocrat who can rise above the pressures of demagogic politics. The trouble is that no such person exists. If by the "expert" we mean someone who has spent their whole life and career in a particular profession, those are the last people we should put in charge of invigilating the measure.
	It is precisely the demand that we should let the professionals get on with things that has brought us to the present pass. Leaving things to the experts was what we did with child protection in Haringey. In lobbying against localism, the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Local Government Association and police authorities argued that directly elected police chiefs would politicise the police, yet it would be perfectly possible to have directly elected justice commissioners, for example, overseeing local police without compromising in any way local forces' operational independence. Saying that policing would be politicised by the direct election of police authorities ignores the fact that in a democratic free society, the way in which we are policed is a matter that should be subject to democratic control. If it is not, why on earth do we talk about policing in our election manifestos?
	Policing has gradually become politicised, yet our political process and system has not adapted or kept pace to allow democratic scrutiny of matters that should be decided by local people. There has been no shortage in the Chamber of Home Secretaries or Ministers talking about the need to make our criminal justice system work, or of Westminster insiders talking about the need to be tough on crime. The trouble is, talk is all that it is. Without the direct election of police authorities, those whom we elect remain powerless to fight crime. We can fight elections with lots of talk about fighting crime, but unless we have directly elected justice commissioners, policing will remain almost entirely beyond democratic control.
	Faced with yet more ritualistic promises, round about the time of an election, of more police and more action on law and order, but never seeing much change, it is no surprise that more and more voters have given up on the whole charade. Instead of real accountability, the Home Office has talked the language of localism but has applied corporatism. Crime and disorder partnerships and community panels are bogus measures that are really examples of corporatism. We need local democratic control.
	Policing is already politicised. Police chiefs lobbied me in the House about identity cards, and they lobbied us about 42-day detention. The other week, at the instigation of Home Office officials, they arrested a member of the Opposition for revealing truths about immigration that the Government wanted to keep under wraps. The issue is not "Do we politicise policing?" but whether there is to be any democratic accountability of policing and whether the police remain under the control of the quango state. This Bill entrenches the power of the quangos.

David Davies: Before turning to clause 13, may I reiterate the comments of many hon. Members who agree—in fact, everyone does so—that trafficking in human beings for any purpose is evil, and who recognise that those evil people must be stamped out and put behind bars? I commend the Government, because over the past few years, there has been greater awareness of that evil trade, of which many of us were ignorant five, six or 10 years ago. It is now very much in everyone's mind, and the Government have tried to ensure that when traffickers are caught, tough sentences are handed out. There are two problems. First, very few of them are caught and, secondly, despite the long sentences that are handed out, most of those people walk out free halfway through as a result of automatic early release, about which I should like to speak at length another time.
	The problem with clause 13 is that it appears to have been drafted in the heat of the moment, rather than after a cold, hard look at the facts. The Minister talks about trying to reduce trafficking by stemming the demand, and about the financial incentive for traffickers to bring women into this country to offer sexual services. If that is the case, and if the Government believe that by going after prostitutes' clients they will stem that demand, they must answer the question that I have posed about child beggars. When I went to Europe and discussed trafficking with senior Europol officers a few months ago on behalf of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, they told me that, to a trafficker, a child beggar is worth more money than a female prostitute. They gave me rough figures—no one can be exact—and said that a child beggar was worth €100,000 a year to a trafficker, and a female prostitute was worth about €75,000 a year. They went on to say that, as a result, some towns in some parts of eastern Europe have practically been turned into baby factories where women produce children specifically so that they can be kidnapped, taken away to countries such as the United Kingdom and exploited as beggars and petty thieves. I am sure that the Minister will agree that that trade is equally disgusting.
	Let us look at the measure logically. If we are to stem the demand for prostitution by going after prostitutes' clients, we should also take action to stem the even greater problem of child beggars. I have asked the question before: if we are to criminalise those who go to prostitutes, should we not also criminalise those who give money to child beggars? Those people are contributing to and causing a problem exactly as the clients of prostitutes are. I put the question directly to the Leader of the House when she gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee. She wrote back a rather strange letter saying that one group of people were being philanthropic and the other was committing rape.
	The first statement might be perfectly true; people who give money to child beggars are being naive, but I accept that their motives are honourable and in that sense they are being philanthropic. However, in most instances people who see prostitutes are not committing rape. If anyone has sex with a woman who has not given her consent—the definition under the law is perfectly clear—they can be charged as the law stands. This law is being brought in only because the men are not committing rape. The women are giving their consent; if they were not, the act of rape would be committed. I am sure that the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) will understand that. It is because the act of consent is given and those men are not committing rape that the new law has to be introduced.

David Davies: Well, the law is already there to deal with the issue, as the hon. Lady knows.
	The measure would ensure the prosecution of men who have had sex with a woman who appeared to them to have given her consent freely. The hon. Lady and Ministers have failed to answer the question of what in practice is the difference between giving money to a child beggar and perpetuating child trafficking for the purposes of begging, and giving money to a prostitute and perpetuating prostitution.
	The fact is that this is bad law, and talk of strict liability will not make it any better. The hon. Lady gave the example of people who sell alcohol to underage children, but obviously shopkeepers can ask for valid ID and check it out. Somebody else gave the example of people running red lights, but we all know that when we drive past traffic lights, it is our responsibility to be sure that they are green; if we do not and we run a red light, we are to blame and can be prosecuted. There is no way in which a punter going to a prostitute can find out for certain whether she has been trafficked. If sex is apparently freely given, the client has to assume that the woman has not been trafficked.
	It is no good the hon. Member for Slough talking about every act of prostitution being one of sexual exploitation. That is not what the prostitutes say. As I said to her earlier, this morning I met a very articulate lady; in fact, I assumed that she was a solicitor and did not at first realise that she worked in the sex industry as well as lobbying Members of Parliament. Her take was that many women work in the industry quite freely because the money and the job are good. She tells me that most of those whom she meets are perfectly nice and decent and that most who run brothels are also that. She even described one brothel as a happy family business. I have no way of knowing how representative she is, but her union is linked to the GMB, which has more links to the hon. Lady's party than to mine.
	What concerns me is that in going after the punters we will be going after the wrong people—it is the traffickers whom we should be targeting. If we start making it easy for the police to get prosecutions by going after clients, then they will go after clients and spend a lot of time trying to collate evidence about them. The clients themselves, who in many instances do report cases where they think that women are being abused, will not go to the police and certainly will not give evidence.
	I would like the Government to answer these simple questions. Why have they done nothing about running a public information campaign to discourage people from giving money to child beggars and try to stop those activities? Why are they doing so little to prevent forced marriage, which is another form of trafficking whereby women are taken from one country to another to act as domestic and sexual slaves for people whom they have never even met before? While we are on the periphery of this subject, perhaps they could also explain why they have done nothing to enforce the law on female genital mutilation that they introduced in 2003, when lots of Members of Parliament made speeches saying that that disgusting practice must be stamped out. They encouraged the Metropolitan police to set up a unit to hunt down and seek out people who had perpetrated this disgusting crime, yet since then not one single person has been convicted and only one person has been investigated. I know that that is the case only because I had to make a case to the Information Commissioner to get the information out of the Metropolitan police, who did their damnedest to try to stop me from having any of it.
	By all means, let the Government show their commitment—let us all show our commitment—to stamping out the evil act of human trafficking, but let us go about it in the right way. We should not criminalise men who seek prostitutes in the belief that they are perfectly willing to have sex, or criminalise prostitutes, some of whom, contrary to what the hon. Member for Slough may think, are perfectly happy with the jobs that they are doing, but go after the traffickers. We should discourage people from giving money to a woman who has obviously been coerced into sex or giving money to a child who has been taken from their home in eastern Europe, or somewhere else, and put out on to the streets of London. We should discourage people who are party to the fact that domestic slaves are brought into this country from some parts of the middle east and forced to work for little or nothing in the houses of very wealthy people from that part of the world. Those are the people whom the Minister should be tackling; if he did that, he would have support in all parts of the House.

David Ruffley: The Bill is a smorgasbord of measures that are sometimes worthy but not always well thought through. It is not the radical reform of our law and order system that the police, and the public whom they serve, need. The first 16 minutes of the Home Secretary's speech—I counted the minutes—were about measures, many real, many imagined, that are not even in the Bill.
	The police do a difficult and often dangerous job on our behalf, and the Bill does not give them the additional tools that they need to do their job. The right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, agreed with me about that, saying that he hoped for a second Bill later this year to deliver some serious police reform. Members of the Home Secretary's own party say that, and they are right.
	The Home Secretary gives us lectures about her criminal record—sorry, her crime record—that are, frankly, complacent. Violent crime is up by almost 80 per cent. under Labour, with 1.099 million violent crimes recorded in 2007-08 compared with just over 615,000 offences in 1998-99. Those are Home Office figures, shown in table 2.4 of its report "Crime in England and Wales 2007/08" of 17 July 2008, so we do not want any argument about the fact that the crime figures are up. Robbery is up by 27 per cent. under Labour and criminal damage by 18 per cent., and just over one in four crimes were detected by the police in 2007-08.
	Why is all that coming about? It is partly to do with the fact that despite five red tape reviews under this Government we still have the unacceptable position that patrol officers spend less than 20 per cent. of their time on the beat. That is not good enough. That was one among many points that my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham) made.
	Much reference has been made in the debate to the reform of the police senior appointments panel in part 1. It is necessary to reform that panel, to secure a higher quality of senior officers for appointment. It is totally unacceptable that there was only one candidate for the vacancy of chief constable of Lincolnshire. The same was true recently of Thames Valley police. As Conservative Members have pointed out, nothing in the relevant clauses will ensure that there is a better, higher-quality calibre of police.
	Clauses 7 and 8 will make it easier for officers to tackle crimes that occur in areas where a collaboration agreement is in force. However, why does the Bill not tackle the real problem and reform the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 to do away with the ridiculous requirement for an officer to fill in a form if he wants to surveille the house of a known, persistent burglar? The measure should do that.
	It is clear from part 1 that Ministers have it in mind to ensure more collaboration to deliver, for example, better level 2 protective services. We agree about that. However, will the Home Secretary and her Ministers mandate collaboration? If they have a plan for that, they should tell the House today.
	As we have heard, the Home Secretary bottled it when it came to introducing some form of elected representation to hold the police to account. She kicked the idea into the long grass, giving it to the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett). Heaven knows when we will hear the results. The Cabinet Office's Casey review found in an independent survey that 68 per cent. of people agree or strongly agree that a person or persons should be elected by local people to hold the police to account on behalf of the community. As recently as November, the Home Secretary said that she was committed to
	"introducing a stronger link between those responsible for delivering policing and the public they serve."
	Perhaps the Minister can tell us in his winding-up speech why the Government suddenly changed their mind and dropped their plans for improving police accountability.
	A solitary clause is intended to improve accountability. It will add a statutory requirement to the Police Act 1996 for police authorities to take account of
	"the views of people in the authority's area".
	Perhaps the Minister will explain how that significantly changes police authorities' current responsibilities. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich (Mr. Carswell) said in a powerful and typically trenchant speech, the Conservatives' solution, which the Minister would do well to adopt, is to replace the police authority with a police commissioner, who is directly elected by voters in a police force area every four years. A safeguard would be provided in a power of recall—a trigger whereby an elected commissioner who went off the rails before the four-year term ended could be recalled and the election rerun. We have also devised other safeguards.
	In another typically trenchant contribution, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mrs. Dorries) made it clear that the public want something simple from the Bill: a commissioner to whom they can complain if policing is going wrong and a mechanism to kick that commissioner out of office in the case of underperformance. What could be simpler? It is a tragedy that part 1 contains nothing comparable to that.
	Part 2 drew many contributions about the sex industry and sex offences. To avoid doubt, let me say that we welcome making lap-dancing clubs subject to local licensing along the lines that the provisions set out.

David Ruffley: I believe that the intention is to deliver that result and we will explore the matter in detail to ensure that the wording achieves that effect.
	There were many powerful contributions about part 2, and it will be incumbent on the Committee to study carefully the points that arose. The hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) made an impassioned and well informed speech about enforcement. She believed that there would be no difficultly about enforcing clause 13. On the other hand, contributions from Conservative Members, such as that from my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Malins), raised technical questions about the way in which enforcement would work.
	What we do know, however, is that organisations tasked with helping vulnerable and trafficked women believe that there is a risk that some of the clauses, if they are not drafted properly and do not work satisfactorily, will drive sex workers further underground. We have to test those propositions in Committee. We also know what the head of the Metropolitan police's human trafficking unit said of the new offence:
	"I think that it is going to be...difficult to enforce"
	in practice, but let us see how we can make it work. Outside bodies, including the UK Network of Sex Work Projects, also believe that the measures relating to the closure of brothels might restrict the ability of outreach organisations that work with sex workers to deliver them help and support. Issues of such huge importance will be tested in Committee, but the debate that we have had on the Floor of the House today has been extremely worth while in teasing some of them out.
	However, there is a case for tougher border protection and control—there can be no substitute for that—to stop trafficking from happening in the first place. The Government have been insufficiently proactive in tackling human trafficking. After a delay of nine months in signing the European convention on action against trafficking, Home Office figures show that in 2007 there were only 17 convictions for trafficking for sexual exploitation. Would it not have been better to have clauses in the Bill to do what the Conservative Opposition have argued for long and hard for the past six to 12 months, which is to introduce a national border police to stop illegal weapons from coming to this country and to stop the illegal, disgusting and pernicious trafficking of human beings? That is what the Bill should contain. Sadly, it does not contain any such measures.
	I am grateful for the contributions from my hon. Friends the Members for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Burrowes). They made important points about how, despite the vast amount of legislation that we have seen to deal with alcohol-related offences in particular, it is clear that more offences and higher fines are not the way to tackle alcohol misuse and binge drinking, and all the attendant consequences. What we need, but what the Bill does not deliver, are measures to free up the police's time, in order to get them out of the station and back on the streets, so that they can deliver more effective policing of licensed premises and off-licences, get young people off the street and crack down on antisocial behaviour.
	The Government had a huge opportunity in this Bill to propose serious measures to free up officers, so that they could get back on the street, and to give local people genuine power and a say over the kind of policing that they want in their communities. This Bill only shows a Government out of ideas. They will have to be out of office if serious law and order reform is ever to begin in this country.

Vernon Coaker: It is called a safeguard—well, we will see what it is called, but I do not believe that that is the kind of democracy that the hon. Member for Harwich was talking about. So let us have a debate about accountability, and let us have a debate about how we can more properly ensure that the police are representative of their communities and take into account what they say. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has introduced sensible, proportionate proposals that will place on police authorities a duty to take the views of local people into account, and that will place on Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary a responsibility to inspect those police authorities to see whether they have done so.
	The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) made an excellent point about police authorities having to ensure not only that they consult the people whom we might expect them to consult but that young people also have a voice in this regard. He was also right to say that, when HMIC inspects the police authorities, it should consider whether that consultation has been achieved. The hon. Gentleman has made an important point, and we should consider the matter.
	It was also stated that we were doing nothing to reduce red tape and cut bureaucracy in a whole range of areas, but we are actually reducing the number of targets in policing. Alongside the Bill, there is a range of measures on crime mapping, on the single confidence target, and on reducing bureaucracy. All of this is happening alongside the policing pledge, and it is happening irrespective of what is in the Bill, because we do not need a Bill to achieve those things. Alongside the Bill, real reform and real changes are taking place.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), the Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, made some important points about alcohol. There is no doubt that many of us enjoy alcohol and find that it adds to our evening out. There is also no doubt, however, that alcohol causes considerable problems and a considerable amount of violence in our society. That is why the Government are looking to see what more they can do, particularly with respect to young people. That is also why we are introducing new offences to tackle some of the problems that young people have with alcohol—a new offence of persistent possession of alcohol in a public place; a new offence that will enable the police, if necessary, to direct young people between the ages of 10 to 15 to leave an establishment; and new measures to allow us to take tougher action against retailers who persistently sell alcohol to young people.

COMMITTEES

Louise Ellman: Yes, it also affects ports such as Hull and Grimsby. The problems arise because of mistakes made by the Government's Valuation Office Agency, part of HM Revenue and Customs. The mistakes are particularly significant because of the current unprecedented economic crisis.
	I thank Mersey Maritime and the Mersey Dock Rating Group for drawing my attention to this important issue. The problems relate to failings by the VOA in carrying out the change from prescriptive to conventional rating for businesses in the 55 statutory ports, and in their ports review; there was no effective communication with businesses.
	The changes, to be implemented from 1 April 2005, required the VOA to conduct detailed assessments of hereditaments in every port, and they involved significant redistribution of rates from port operators to companies. That resulted in some companies being rated for the first time. It was not until September 2008—three and a half years later—that the VOA started to instruct local authorities to issue vastly increased backdated rates bills. The bills were backdated over three and a half years, and the demands could not have been anticipated or budgeted for by the companies concerned. Where rates had previously been paid to port operators with the rent, it meant double billing. No impact assessment of the change was made.